


the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you

by LochTayBoatSong



Series: Reylo Hiker AU series [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ben Solo is a tol good boi, Ben Solo is an archaeology nerd, Ben is an American expat, Cunnilingus, Devoted Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Enthusiastic Consent, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Grief/Mourning, Hadrian's Wall, Hiking, Hiking Porn, I will try to keep this from devolving into a full-on long-distance hiking manual, Making Out, Minor Armitage Hux/Phasma, Minor Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Rey (Star Wars), Rey just likes tramping through pretty landscapes, Reylo - Freeform, Sex, Stargazing, Tea cures all ills, The Good Boy Sweater as a plot device, Thirsty Rey (Star Wars), Vaginal Sex, but no promises, graphic descriptions of the English countryside, handjobs, hostel meet-cute, love letter to the north of England
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:21:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22287067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LochTayBoatSong/pseuds/LochTayBoatSong
Summary: Modern AU in which Rey Johnson and Ben Solo meet while hiking Hadrian's Wall.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Reylo Hiker AU series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1767616
Comments: 189
Kudos: 152





	1. Day 1: Wallsend to Newcastle, 5 miles

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from [my all-time favorite Rumi poem.](https://allpoetry.com/The-Breeze-at-Dawn)
> 
> I am purposely not naming Rey's grandfather in this fic because I am still salty about the Rey Palpatine reveal, but I'm writing him so that he can be read as either Obi-Wan or the Episode I iteration of Sheev in his kindest moments. Feel free to imagine either or neither. :)
> 
> This is gloriously unbeta'd and any mistakes or inaccuracies are my own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editorial Note 7/6/2020: I am pleased and honored to announce that this fic has been selected by the Reylo Fanfic Book Club as their Fic of the Week for the week of July 5, 2020! TazWren has made a banner to mark the occasion, which is now on proud display! :)

“Walking clothes?” 

“Check.”

“Town clothes?”

“Check.”

“Bras and underwear?”

“Double-check.”

“Pajamas?”

“Not taking any. I’ll just sleep in the next day’s base layer.”

“Got it. Rain gear?”

“Check.”

“Towel?” Before Rey could respond, Rose looked up from the packing list she’d been reading and said, with affectionate exasperation, “Explain to me again why you always insist on bringing your own towel on these trips?”

“Because Douglas Adams said so.” Rey continued to survey all the hiking gear laid out on her bed with a critical and practiced eye. “Do you reckon I could get away without the heavy jumper? It is May after all.”

“May in the north of England, hen.” Rey and Rose’s third flatmate, Jannah, leaned against the doorframe, cup of tea in hand. 

Rey scoffed at Jannah good-naturedly. “We _are_ in the north of England, Jannah!”

“I’m talking _proper_ north of England. I mean you’ll practically be in Scotland by the end, yeah? Not taking a jumper seems a little like tempting fate.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Rey mused, considering the clothing, toiletries, and navigational gear laid out on her bed once more. “I guess there’s nothing for it but to pack it all up and see what room there is to spare.”

“She’s packing at last!” Rose proclaimed teasingly, as Rey unzipped her empty hiking backpack and began strategically loading it up. It was a well-established running joke between the three of them that Rey always waited until the last possible moment to begin packing for trips of any kind. “What time is your train again? Two this afternoon?”

“Yep!” Rey glanced at her watch. “It’s only ten now. Plenty of time.”

“We’ll leave you to it then.” Jannah sipped her tea and began walking down the hall toward their common room. “Call us if you need one of us to sit on that thing so it’ll close! And hug us before you leave!”

Rey smiled as she continued to load things into her backpack. Rose and Jannah were good flatmates, as well as good friends. The three of them had met during Freshers Week at Durham University and had quickly become a close-knit unit. They’d all lived on the same hall throughout their studies, and after they graduated it had seemed only natural to get a flat together. They all made decent money – Rose as a nurse, Jannah as a teacher at the cathedral’s chorister school, and Rey as a research assistant at the university, so between the three of them they could afford a three-bedroom flat in a nice part of Durham.

Rey had loved Durham from the moment she arrived there to live with her maternal grandfather, many years before. It had all the history and culture of a cathedral city and a university town, but the atmosphere of the city felt warm and unhurried. Grandpa’s home had felt much the same. She’d spent her early years in and around London, in and out of foster care as her parents continually battled drugs, alcohol, and each other. 

Her mother’s father had finally gotten custody of her when she was nine, and her life had immediately become much happier. He was an intelligent, cultured, and humorous man, and he had given Rey a love and appreciation of the outdoors that she had lacked in crowded, aggressively cosmopolitan London. They’d section-hiked the Pennine Way together over her school holidays while she was growing up, and the Dales Way just before she’d started uni.

Rey swiped at sudden tears as she finished stuffing her toiletries into her backpack’s upper compartment. Grandpa had passed away in January and she still missed him terribly. This hike wouldn’t be her first solo hike – she’d done a few of those over her uni holidays – but it would be the first since his passing. It was the first one she’d planned without his input, and it would be the first she wouldn’t get to tell him about in person.

Rey zipped the backpack shut. Everything fit with just a little room to spare…except for her thick hoodie jumper. Rey frowned. Most of her hiking clothing was designed to fold down small, to conserve space. But not the jumper. She liked wearing it during cold-weather hikes because it was one of the warmest things she owned, but it was such a pain to pack, taking up an inordinate amount of room.

Making a snap decision, Rey carried it to her closet and hung it up. “Tempting fate it is,” she murmured. 

She hoisted the backpack onto her back, testing its heft and balance, then bent far over at the waist to cinch the shoulder straps. Then she straightened, buckled the hip strap and the chest strap, and took an experimental lap around the room. The backpack felt solid but not heavy, most of the weight settling on her hips rather than her shoulders. Perfect.

Rey looked at her watch again. Just before eleven. Plenty of time to swing by the supermarket for trail food before heading to the train station for the short journey to Newcastle.

“Right, then. Hadrian’s Wall, here I come!”

Her face must still have been blotchy from crying, because the moment she stepped into the common room to tell Jannah and Rose she was heading out, they enveloped her in a three-way hug. Rey’s backpack made the embrace ungainly, and they all giggled as they negotiated arms. 

“I know you miss him terribly,” Rose murmured to her sympathetically. “He’d be so, so proud of you. He _is_ proud of you, I know it.”

Rey nodded tremulously. “I know he is. It’s just hard that I won’t be able to tell him about this trip afterward.”

Jannah smoothed a piece of Rey’s hair behind her ear and tweaked it gently. “Tell him anyway. He’ll hear you.” Jannah squeezed Rey’s shoulder, then began shooing her to the door. “Off you go, then. Don’t forget to text us, or we’ll call out Mountain Rescue on you. Oh! I almost forgot.” Jannah whirled around to dig through her purse, which was sitting on the sofa, then turned back to Rey with a grin, stuffing a 3-pack of condoms into her jeans pocket. “Just in case you meet any handsome Romans!”

***

The train ride to Newcastle was short – less than twenty minutes – and a relatively short walk from the station brought Rey to her hostel. Like all hostels, most of its rooms held multiple bunk beds, designed to be shared by people traveling lightly and on a budget. She had booked a private room – she preferred to travel in some comfort while hiking, eschewing a tent and sleeping bag in favor of a proper bed whenever possible, but she still tried to save money when she could. Plus she enjoyed the convivial atmosphere of hostel common areas and shared kitchens.

She took stock of her room – cramped but adequate for the one night she’d be here – and unslung her backpack. Now that she was in Newcastle, near the eastern trailhead of Hadrian’s Wall, she had a mission to attend to. 

Rey had been using the same hiking backpack for six years – a gift from her grandfather on her seventeenth birthday. It was serviceable and hard-wearing – nigh indestructible, in fact. But one of her favorite things about it was that the upper compartment was detachable and could be used as a daypack. She swiftly made use of that feature now, emptying the compartment of her toiletries and filling it with a water bottle, some snacks, her trail map, and her wallet. She exchanged her jeans for a pair of lightweight linen trousers with multiple pockets. Her compass went into one of those pockets along with her Swiss army knife, as it usually did. She regarded her trekking poles for a moment, collapsed and stowed in the backpack’s outside netting. Then she shrugged and pulled them out. From what she’d read and researched, she likely wouldn’t need them today, but they were something of a security blanket and she liked to have them with her.

She shot off a quick text to Rose and Jannah, letting them know that she’d gotten to Newcastle and all was well. Then she bound up her loose brown hair into the three buns she customarily wore when doing physical activity, and donned her boots. Finally, poles folded under her arm, she struck out from the hostel, back in the direction of the train station.

While there wasn’t much she missed about London, she did recall being fascinated by the Tube as a child. The fact that she could disappear underground in one part of the city and reappear in a completely different part sometime later had seemed marvelous to her as a child. So she felt a little half-forgotten childhood thrill as she navigated her way to Newcastle Central’s lower level and bought a one-way Metro ticket to Wallsend.

Much of the journey was above-ground, and Rey watched as Newcastle’s eastern suburbs slid by in the afternoon light. She found her thoughts turning to her grandfather again. Grandpa had loved the north of England, and had taken Rey all over it: to the Lake District, to many of the innumerable castles that dotted the border with Scotland, and to the cathedral cities of York and Carlisle. Carlisle in particular had held a special place in his heart, because it was his birthplace. 

That was a big reason why Rey had chosen Hadrian’s Wall to be her first hike after his death. Over the course of the next seven days, she’d be walking toward Carlisle, and then a little beyond it. It had felt right, looking at a map of all of England’s National Trails and seeing this one originate near her grandfather’s own city. 

The Metro’s loudspeaker dinged, indicating that their next stop would be Wallsend, and Rey shivered in excitement and anticipation. Her hike was officially about to begin.

***

Wallsend’s main claim to fame – besides being the birthplace of Sting – was the remains of a Roman fort called Segedunum. The town played this up all it could. Rey remembered reading somewhere that its Metro station was the only such station in England to have bilingual signage in English and Latin, and she was gratified to see that it was true as she stepped off the train car.

The Segedunum Museum was easy to find, and Rey indulged in a look around. There was a small movie theater with a short film about what the fort may have looked like during Roman times playing on a loop, a modest café, and a gift shop filled with all sorts of Hadrian’s Wall memorabilia. Rey giggled at a shirt reading “I Came, I Saw, I Blistered,” but decided that buying it before she even began walking was a little premature. She did buy a bag of pick-n-mix, though.

Spying the folded-up poles tucked securely under Rey’s arm, the woman at the till smiled at her. “Are you starting or finishing, hinnie?”

Rey smiled back. “Starting. Just from here to Newcastle today.”

“Enjoy it, then! If you go back out the main entrance and around the side of the building, you’ll find the start.”

Rey thanked her and exited the museum, stowing the candy in her daypack. She recognized that she’d been stalling, just a little. She considered herself to be a relatively experienced hiker, but there were always a few nerves right before she started a big walk. But one of the enduring lessons she’d learned from all those trips with Grandpa was how to manage seemingly insurmountable tasks. “Emily Dickinson once said, ‘If your nerve deny you, go above your nerve.’ A valuable lesson in anything, my dearling,” he had told her, winking.

Around the back of the museum, Rey found the sign officially marking the eastern end of the Hadrian’s Wall path, proclaiming “84 miles to Maia Roman Fort (Bowness-on-Solway)”. She got out her phone and took a selfie with the sign, then texted it to Rose and Jannah along with the words “officially underway!! :)”. Then she unfolded and locked her trekking poles, turned her feet toward the west, and started walking.

***

The first five miles of Rey’s journey were a disappointment.

The path took her along the River Tyne and out of Wallsend into…industrial estates. Gray, urban industrial estates. And while the sun had been out earlier in the day, it had now clouded over, which meant there was little relief from the grayness of the buildings.

Rey sighed and trudged onward. Surely this had to improve?

It did improve a little bit as she walked on. She left the industrial estates behind and passed yacht clubs and smart-looking waterfront flats, the River Tyne always in view on her left side. As she got nearer to Newcastle there was more greenery on the slope above her, but there was also more and more evidence of revelry that had taken place the previous Bank Holiday weekend. At regular intervals there was garbage, broken glass, and evidence of fires on the path. Local people evidently used this part of the trail as a party spot, heedless of any mess they left behind, and it made Rey sad and angry. She usually tried to pick up any trash she saw while walking, but she hadn’t thought to bring anything to put it in besides her daypack, which was already full. So she did her best to skirt the broken bottles and continued onward toward Newcastle.

A little over two hours after leaving Segedunum, she arrived at Newcastle Quayside, feeling dispirited. The gray clouds which had been growing thicker overhead all afternoon chose that moment to start drizzling, and she hurried back toward her hostel.

She let herself back into her room, sat on her narrow bed, and began unbooting her feet, feeling disconsolate. “Well, that sucked,” she murmured to herself, as she peeled her socks off, inspecting her feet for blisters. She didn’t blister easily, but today’s walk had been entirely on hard tarmac and her feet were complaining. She looked out the window, saw that it was properly raining now, and sighed.

After giving herself another minute or so to indulge in self-pity, Rey’s natural optimism returned. The trail would improve tomorrow – surely it had to, otherwise it wouldn’t be so popular. And now she’d cheer herself up by having a shower and then a cup of tea and some pick-n-mix in the lounge.

Half an hour later, in comfortable clothes and with her hair still damp from the shower in the hostel’s communal ladies’ room, Rey made her way into the lounge armed with her tea, her bag of candy, and her trail map. She already knew where she’d be going the next day: Heddon-on-the-Wall, about ten miles away, where she had an Airbnb booked. But familiarizing herself with the following day’s exact route was an evening routine she’d engaged in ever since her first long walks with her grandfather.

There were a few other people in the lounge: a middle-aged couple playing chess, a girl a little younger than Rey writing in a journal, and a small group sitting off to one side, having an animated conversation in a language that sounded like German. But one person in particular caught her eye.

The first thing Rey noticed was the guidebook he held in his hands – a Hadrian’s Wall guidebook. The second thing she noticed was his actual hands. They were BIG. Big enough that they obscured most of the guidebook’s cover, with only the words “Walking Hadrian’s” visible behind them. The third thing she noticed was that the rest of him was big, too. He was sitting slightly hunched over on one of the sofas ranged around a large coffee table in the center of the common room, reading something in the guidebook with rapt attention, black eyebrows knitted together under a fall of black hair that reached nearly to his shoulders; but from the way his legs were folded up in front of him she got the sense that he’d be well over six feet tall when he stood up. He wore jeans and a gray long-sleeved shirt, which hung on him slightly but still managed to convey the presence of not-inconsiderable muscle underneath. He looked imposing, maybe even a little intimidating. But then Rey looked at his feet – they were resting one atop the other in a way that almost childish, encased in vivid neon blue socks.

Rey smiled to herself. Any man who wore colorful socks was worth approaching.

She made a beeline for the empty sofa sitting perpendicular to the black-haired giant’s. He didn’t look up, seemingly still engrossed in his guidebook. _“In the zone,”_ she thought. _“Or maybe just shy.”_ She set her tea on the table and unfolded her map, getting out a pen to make notes. The next several minutes passed in companionable quiet, with the exception of the German conversationalists in the corner, as Rey familiarized herself with her route for the following day: through Newcastle’s western suburbs, eventually climbing out of the Tyne valley and into Heddon-on-the-Wall. Fairly straightforward. 

Satisfied, Rey sipped her tea and prepared to fold her map away again, when her gaze alighted on the black-haired giant, still reading his guidebook. She decided it was time to break the silence. “Starting or finishing?”

He startled slightly, looking at her with wide, questioning eyes. They were brown, Rey noticed. She gestured at his book. “Hadrian’s Wall. Are you starting it or finishing it?”

“Oh! Uh, starting.” Then he seemed to notice Rey’s map, still unfolded on the coffee table in front of them, and his posture relaxed slightly. “You?” His voice was a deep baritone, his flat accent identifying him as either American or Canadian. Rey wasn’t practiced enough to differentiate the two yet.

“Starting. Start _ed_ , I should say. I took the Metro to Wallsend earlier and walked back.”

“Oh aye? What did you think of Segedunum?”

The colloquialism took Rey by surprise, sounding strange in North American-accented English, but she quickly recovered. “It was cool. Some neat displays. I only looked around for a few minutes before I started walking, though.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing it. I’ve heard they’ve got the actual boundaries of the original fort marked out on the ground near the museum. It must’ve been an awesome sight in its day.” He paused and thinned his lips, as if there were more he wanted to say but he was reluctant to say it. “I’m a bit of an archaeology nerd. It’s why I’m doing this hike. A big part of why, anyway.”

Rey smiled. “There should be plenty for you to nerd out over, from what I understand. Roman ruins everywhere you look. I’m mostly doing the walk just for fun, though. I like seeing new landscapes from the ground.”

She tensed slightly then. This was usually the part where people asked her if she was traveling alone. And when the answer to that was affirmative, the bombardment of pearl-clutching inevitably ensued: “Is it safe for you to be doing that? A young woman all alone? Aren’t you scared? What will you do if something happens? You need to be traveling WITH somebody!” One old boyfriend of hers had had the temerity to forbid her from going on any more solo trips. He’d become her ex at the end of that conversation. 

But Rey’s mental rehearsal of her usual rebuttals – “Yes, it’s quite safe, my roommates have my full itinerary as well as numbers to call if I don’t check in when expected, I’ve done this many times before and I assure you it’s fine, and by the way, would you be asking me these questions if I had a penis?” – proved to be unneeded. He just smiled at her – a very slight one, but one that reached his eyes, nonetheless – and said, “That’s quite poetic. ‘New landscapes from the ground.’ I’ll have to write that down.” Then he extended his hand. “I’m Ben, by the way.”

Rey shook his hand. It dwarfed hers. “Rey.”

“Nice to meet you, Rey. How far are you walking tomorrow?”

“To Heddon-on-the-Wall. You?”

“Same. I’m starting from Wallsend, though.”

Rey raised her eyebrows slightly. “Long day for you tomorrow, then! Fifteen miles to start?” Rey had a fifteen-mile day of her own planned, but not until the end of the walk. She usually had to work up to those sorts of distances.

Ben grimaced slightly. “Aye. I had planned to do what you did and walk the first few miles today, but I was late leaving Glasgow and didn’t get here in time.”

So that explained the oddly-Scottish colloquialisms. “You don’t sound like a Weegie,” Rey grinned impishly at him.

Ben rolled his eyes, but his answering half-grin told her he wasn’t truly annoyed. “I’m from the States originally, but I’m studying at the University of Glasgow.” Seeming to anticipate her next questions, he said “Chicago. Postgraduate. Archaeology.”

“Ah, it all falls into place.” Rey thought she might have taken the teasing a bit too far, because his posture hunched slightly and she thought she saw some red in his cheeks. So she quickly moved to keep the conversation going. “I finished my chemistry degree last year, at the University of Durham. I still live there.”

Ben looked at her sidelong. “Test tubes and Bunsen burners, then?”

Rey rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “Sometimes.”

Ben nodded, then glanced at his watch. “Well, I’m for my bed. Early start tomorrow.” He rose and stretched, and Rey saw that her suspicion was correct and he had to be about six-foot-three. Her breath caught, just a little. He looked at her again when he finished stretching. “I’ll see you on the trail tomorrow?”

Rey smirked. “If you catch me.”

Ben smirked back. “Oh, I’ll catch you.”

Rey felt her face heat as Ben left the common room, and she sank back into the sofa cushions. As she swallowed the rest of her tea, she heard a voice in her head that sounded like a mixture of Rose’s and Jannah’s, saying _“Darling, you are in so much trouble.”_


	2. Day 2: Newcastle to Heddon-on-the-Wall, 10 miles

Rey was an early riser, and the following morning found her taking advantage of the hostel’s free breakfast before many of its other inhabitants were up and about. 

She lamented the lack of protein in the breakfast spread. It was almost exclusively carbs: various dry cereals, bread rolls, and toast, with milk and orange juice to drink. She recalled Grandpa teaching her about trail nutrition as a preteen: “Sugar and carbohydrates will give you a short burst of energy, and that’s why you want to have them in your emergency rations,” he’d said, holding up a Kendal mint cake with a smile as a young Rey grimaced. “This sort of thing can get you up and out of a ravine, or down that last mile of trail in foul weather. In short, it can save your life. But for your day-to-day energy needs, nothing beats a good old-fashioned English fry-up. It takes your body longer to digest protein, and the result is a slow, continual release of energy throughout the day. So if anyone ever offers you a cooked breakfast, do not hesitate, my dearling.” 

It was advice Rey had taken to heart, but no sausage or eggs would be forthcoming from the hostel’s kitchen today. But she had some mixed nuts among her trail food, which she shoved into her mouth as she finished filling her water bottles and repacking her backpack for the day. Maybe on her way out of town she’d be able to find a bakery selling sausage rolls.

She checked out of the hostel and made her way back to the Quayside. She’d stopped at the Millennium Bridge the previous day, since it was a recognizable landmark, and she made her way back to it now, pausing to look at the morning light on the River Tyne. It was a fair morning, with the sun visible among fluffy white clouds, and the day’s foot traffic along the river was just beginning to pick up. Rey took a photo and began walking.

***

Rey was thankful for the pretty view of the river for the next few miles, because the walk out of Newcastle was just as urban and uninspiring as the walk into it had been. It was also on tarmac again, and Rey whispered a prayer of thanks that she’d remembered to put Compeed on her blister-prone spots before setting out.

As she continued to walk, the heavier foot-traffic of the city center gradually died away until the only other people on the path were locals out for a leisurely stroll: parents pushing children in prams, dog-owners walking their pets, and older couples meandering along hand-in-hand. Rey could see people rowing boats out on the river. _“Now that’s one way to get where you’re going,”_ she thought wryly. _“Next time I’ll do this in a boat.”_

At lunchtime she reached the quiet suburb of Newburn, bought two sausage rolls from a café, and sat on a bench overlooking the Tyne to eat them. This would be her last view of the river for a while. Once she finished her lunch she’d be crossing a golf course, walking through some woods, and then climbing up and out of the valley. While a sustained climb at the end of a ten-mile day was not ordinarily Rey’s idea of fun, she found she was looking forward to it. What she’d told Ben the previous evening was true – she went hiking for fun, and to look at beautiful scenery. And while urban cityscapes had their own sort of beauty, they weren’t what she had come on this trip to see. Now at last, she’d be getting into the true northern English countryside.

Thinking of Ben made Rey pause and smile, and for half a moment she considered lingering in Newburn for a bit longer to see if he’d appear. _“I’ll catch you,”_ he’d said, in a way that was almost flirtatious, and totally at odds with the way he’d blushed when she’d teased him about his fascination with archaeology. Much as she was a habitual lone walker, it might be pleasant to have some company…but no, for all she knew he might be ahead of her already. Those long legs of his surely carried him quickly.

“Get a grip and hike your own hike, Johnson,” she muttered to herself as she threw her rubbish in a nearby bin and shouldered her backpack, ready to continue.

***

The rest of the day was much more to Rey’s taste than the previous miles had been. The path skirted around a golf course and took her to a wooded area, with dead-flat trail on packed gravel. Rey’s tarmac-weary feet rejoiced, and the rest of her rejoiced along with them. She vaguely remembered reading somewhere that this stretch was actually a disused railway line, which explained the flat gradient. She would have skipped down it if she hadn’t been wearing the backpack. Instead, she dug her ancient iPod out of her hip-belt, deciding that she would indulge in some music.

At length she reached the turn in the path that would take her up and out of the valley to Heddon-on-the-Wall, and she sang her way up it: _“Light the fire bright, let it blaze alright, oh hope that you’re good to me, oh you’re good to me, hope that you’re good to me baby…”_ She cleared the trees and turned to look behind her, at the Tyne River Valley spread out below her, and almost laughed with pleasure.

She still had quite a bit of climbing left after clearing the trees, so she stowed her iPod and concentrated in pacing herself, occasionally dropping into the hillwalker’s lope her grandfather had taught her, using her poles to help maintain her forward momentum. She occasionally passed houses, all with windows angled to take advantage of the impressive view over the valley, and let herself fantasize about living in them. It was something she did often on these trips – imagining what it would be like to live on an isolated hillside or by a remote loch, tending a flock of sheep. It was fanciful, but part of the magic of these walks.

Almost imperceptibly the houses became more numerous, and then Rey was out of the valley and in the village of Heddon-on-the-Wall. She almost whooped with glee. The day’s walk was nearly over, and what a fine day most of it had been! A few twists and turns down the village lanes brought her to her Airbnb, which was a converted shed in the owner’s back garden. The owner, Cassian, had left her a note telling her where to find the key, and that he and his wife Jyn were out but that she should let herself in and make herself at home and that they’d check on her later. She duly let herself in and gratefully unshouldered her backpack, texting Rose and Jannah to let them know she’d arrived safely before taking a look around. It was a cozy space, with a fully-functioning bathroom, a small sitting area, and a sleeping platform with a small TV mounted over it. There was also a tea tray sitting just inside the door. Rey smiled. Perfect.

***

Two hours later Rey had showered, hung up her walking clothes to air out, put on clean clothes, and was enjoying a cup of tea while idly flipping through the channels on the TV when Cassian knocked on her door to see if there was anything she needed. “I love it,” she told him with a smile.

“Good,” Cassian smiled back. “No troubles with the hot water in the shower?” He looked young, not much older than thirty, with brown hair and a slight growth of beard on his cheeks. His accent sounded vaguely Spanish.

“None at all. I have everything I need.”

“Good. Well, let me or Jyn know if anything comes up,” he said, gesturing to the pretty brunette woman pulling weeds from a small flowerbed near the house. Jyn smiled and waved as Cassian began to turn back to the house. 

Just then, Rey’s stomach growled, a reminder that it was nearly dinnertime and she hadn’t eaten since Newburn. “Actually, could you tell me where a good chip shop is?”

Armed with directions from Cassian, Rey made her way through the village’s winding streets in search of fish, potatoes, salt, and vinegar. The weather had stayed fair throughout the day and the sun was just beginning to dip toward the horizon. Twilight lingered in May, so there were at least three hours left before full dark and many of the town’s citizens were out and about, running last-minute errands and organizing evening meals for their own families. Rey found the chippie with ease, due in no small part to the queue which was spilling out the door and onto the sidewalk. Evidently this was a particularly good chippie. Rey joined the queue and settled in to wait…

…And nearly jumped out of her skin a minute later when a baritone voice came out of nowhere and said “Fancy meeting you here,” somewhere over her head.

Rey gave an undignified squawk and whirled around, clutching her chest. “Ben! Hey!”

“Hey,” he replied with a half-grin. “Sorry for startling you.”

“Oh, it’s okay. I was just zoned out, I guess. In deep thought about what to order. From the chippie. That we’re queuing for. Um.” _Quit babbling, Johnson_. “How did you get on today? I see you caught me after all.”

Ben grimaced slightly. “Barely. I only got to town about 45 minutes ago. Pitched up and came straight here. I’m famished.”

“You’re camping?” Rey asked as the queue moved and they both shuffled toward the doorway. “Whereabouts?”

“In a field on the way out of town. How about you?”

“Airbnb’ing.” A large party ahead of them got their food and left, and Rey and Ben moved forward until they were nearly inside the shop’s doorway. Rey noticed that Ben was doing a pronounced “hiker shuffle,” moving his legs stiffly as if his knees were refusing to bend, and favoring his right foot slightly. He was also still wearing his boots, while she’d changed her own boots for a pair of flip-flops before setting out for the chippie. “How are the feet?”

“Didn’t bargain on all that tarmac around Newcastle.” Ben grimaced in earnest, then his features softened. “Segedunum was awesome, though. I got started walking later than I intended because I spent so long looking around there. And fifteen miles is verging on a long day in any event. You’re looking spry, though, if it’s not too bold to say.”

Rey smiled and wriggled her toes. “I was happy to get out of Newcastle. The views improved as the day went on today, don’t you think?”

By now they were both at the counter, and they ordered: Fish and chips with extra curry sauce for Rey, and scampi and chips for Ben. They waited in companionable silence until their orders were called out and handed to them, in Styrofoam boxes wrapped in paper. “Do you…” Ben suddenly looked shy again. “Do you want to eat together, somewhere?”

“Sure,” Rey replied, eyeing the sky. “It’s still fair out. Why don’t we find a spot outdoors?”

“Do you mind if we go to where my tent is? The less walking I have to do for the rest of the evening, the better.”

Ben’s tent – a dramatic red and black two-man affair – was pitched in a disused pasture on the western edge of the village, just off the road they’d be following to continue the trail the next day. A low stone wall surrounded the field, and they both sat leaning against it with their legs stretched out in the grass as they dug into their food, Ben removing his boots and socks (neon orange, Rey noticed) before he did so.

They ate in silence for a few minutes, and then Ben suddenly spoke.

“I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable yesterday. With that whole ‘I’ll catch you’ thing. I didn’t mean to imply that you’re a slow walker. Or that you don’t know what you’re doing. Because I’m sure you do.” Ben was looking straight ahead and not at her, color faintly staining his cheeks. “I didn’t realize until later that night how it might have sounded. So, um, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad, if I did.”

Rey smiled softly. “You didn’t make me feel bad, Ben. I honestly didn’t read anything into it. Besides…” Rey almost said _“Besides you flirting with me, if that’s what you were doing,”_ but decided against it. Instinct told her that their relationship _(“Relationship? Honestly, Johnson!”_ ) was still too new and tenuous for that, so she let the sentence hang and forged ahead. “Thank you for apologizing, anyway.” Another thought occurred to her. “And thank you for not doing the whole song and dance people usually do when they find out I’m walking alone.”

Ben finally looked at her then, the hot color in his face receding and some of his usual aplomb returning. “What song and dance is that?”

Rey picked at a blade of grass between them. “People usually ask me ‘Is that safe? Should you be doing that alone?’ That sort of thing. And you didn’t, so thank you.”

“Oh, well I figure you know what you’re doing.” Rey looked quickly into Ben’s face, but didn’t see a trace of guile or flirtatiousness there. Just openness and sincerity. “But nae bother.” Rey couldn’t help but smile at yet another Scottish-ism spoken in Ben’s American accent, and Ben answered with a half-smile of his own. Then they both returned to their food, and more innocuous conversation.

“I’ve actually never tried curry sauce on my chips before.”

“Would you like to?”

Ben dunked one of his chips into Rey’s proffered sauce container and popped it into his mouth whole. “Hm. Interesting. You can keep the rest, though.”

“Fine, heathen. Celtic or Rangers?”

“Neither. Queen’s Park.” Rey gave a theatrical gasp and Ben playfully pelted a chip at her. “I take it you’re a Durham City AFC girl?”

“Naturally. What other sorts of walking do you do?”

“I was in Boy Scouts when I was younger. That was where I learned camping basics.” Ben finished the last of his food and balled up the paper it had come in, preparatory to throwing it away. “But I didn’t really start doing any serious overnight trips until I moved to Scotland. I’ve done a few Munro-bagging weekends, and walked bits of the West Highland Way. This will be the first long-distance path I’ve done end-to-end, though.”

“Awesome!”

“Thanks. You?”

“Let’s see.” Rey began ticking off trails on her fingers. “I did the Pennine Way in lots of small sections with my grandfather, growing up. The Dales Way, Saint Cuthbert’s Way, the Bronte Way, and a couple sections of the South West Coast Path. I’ve been doing that one a bit at a time over the last two or three summers. And now Hadrian’s Wall!”

Ben blew out his cheeks. “You do know what you’re doing then!” Rey ducked her head at the compliment, and smiled. “Do you usually stay in B&Bs?”

“B&Bs, Airbnbs, and hostels, yes. Whatever’s available at my overnight points, basically. I don’t mind hard walking during the day, but I like my creature comforts at night. Hot meal, hot shower, bit of telly, warm bed.”

Ben flexed and extended his toes. _“Big feet,”_ Rey’s brain helpfully supplied. 

“Fair. Carrying and setting up the camping equipment can be a pain sometimes. But I like the freedom it gives me, not _having_ to make it to anywhere in particular each night. Plus, there are areas of Scotland where there simply aren’t any towns with accommodation options, anyway. And I’ve always liked the idea of carrying everything I need to be self-sufficient with me.”

“Fair,” Rey echoed back to him. By now she’d finished her food, and they’d both begun yawning. “Well, I should be getting to my bed,” she said, beginning the laborious process of standing up on legs and feet stiff from ten miles of walking.

Ben checked his watch. “Aye, me too. A little after eight; nearly hiker midnight!” he said with a little exaggerated drama, stretching his arms overhead.

Rey stood up and, acting on a sudden, irresistible impulse, extended both her hands to help him up. Ben hesitated for only a split-second before taking her hands, and they worked together to lever him upright, him groaning and her laughing.

As Ben massaged his lower back, Rey leaned back down and snatched up his rubbish from dinner along with hers, before he could protest. “I’ll bin it for you. You’ve had a long day.” Then it occurred to her that they hadn’t spoken at all about the next day. “How far are you walking tomorrow?”

“’Plan A’ is Chollerford. I have a pitch reserved at a campground there. But it’ll depend on how my legs feel in the morning. You?”

“Same, Chollerford. I have a B&B booked, so I have to make it.” Rey wrinkled her nose slightly, recalling their earlier conversation.

Ben nodded, letting his black hair fall over his eyes. Rey was seized with the temptation to smooth it out of his face, but resisted. Ben looked at her through his hair and asked, a little diffidently, “Maybe I’ll see you on the trail tomorrow?”

Rey smiled softly at him. “Yeah. Don’t wait for me if you’re an early riser, but I’m sure I’ll see you sometime.”

Ben nodded. “Okay. Sleep well, Rey.”

“You too, Ben.”

Rey climbed over the stone wall and allowed herself one backward glance, toward where Ben was unzipping his tent’s rainfly preparatory to crawling inside. They caught each other’s eye, and she waved. He waved back.

Rey walked back through the village to her Airbnb, finding a handy rubbish bin on the way. The sun was only just setting, but it would be light out for a while yet, and Rey idly admired the colors of the sky and clouds as she walked along.

Arriving back at Cassian and Jyn’s house, she let herself into the converted shed, brushed her teeth, and put her hair up in its nighttime bun. Any thoughts of watching a last bit of TV before bed were banished by a sudden wave of pleasant exhaustion, and Rey climbed onto the sleeping platform, ready for a well-earned night’s rest. Her last conscious thought before she slipped into a dreamless sleep was of brown eyes through black hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cassian and Jyn's Airbnb is based on [this place](https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/16671204?source_impression_id=p3_1579817750_WLXCUUgiZt71ilBm).
> 
> The song Rey sings to herself during this chapter is ["Would That I" by Hozier](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsu5ZZwzFyk).


	3. Day 3: Heddon-on-the-Wall to Chollerford, 14 miles

Upon waking, Rey realized two things: that she’d completely neglected her map study the night before, and that she desperately needed to pee.

The second realization taken care of, Rey boiled water for tea and fished her map and a granola bar out of her backpack. Today would be her longest day yet – fourteen miles – and she felt a little frisson of nervous anticipation at the thought. 

“That’s a half-marathon! MORE than a half-marathon,” Rose had exclaimed once, in one of their early conversations when the talk had turned to family and eventually wound around to the walks she did with Grandpa. Ever since then, Rey could never help fondly hearing Rose’s voice whenever she planned a day that was thirteen miles or more. 

She flexed and extended her toes and rolled her ankles, chewing absently on the end of her pen as she regarded the map. A longish day but a level one, mostly over open moorland. And except for one brief section which would take her around a farm at right angles, the trail was practically dead-straight. _“I guess the Romans only knew how to build things in straight lines,”_ Rey thought. 

She smiled then. Today was the day the first wall fragments were supposed to appear. Ben would be pleased.

Rey packed up, wrote a thank you note to leave for Jyn and Cassian, donned her walking gear, and set out into the Northumbrian morning. It was cool and overcast, but the wind was still and Rey dared to hope that it wouldn’t rain. She wound her way back through Heddon-on-the-Wall and passed by the field where Ben had camped the night before. Ben was already gone, a patch of flattened grass the only evidence he’d ever been there at all. _“Leave no trace,”_ Rey thought with a smile. She felt a small pang that he’d gotten away before her, but swiftly quashed it. She’d catch him up at some point.

The road out of Heddon-on-the-Wall took her over an overpass crossing the A69, and then a Hadrian’s Wall waymarker directed her off the road and into a field. Rey wriggled her toes inside her boots, happy to be on grass at last. An airplane flew overhead, on approach to the airport at Newcastle. Rey smiled, extended her arms out in imitation of the plane, and continued on.

***

Roughly two hours later, having passed through the hamlet of Harlow Hill and crossed the causeway over Whittledene Reservoir, where she’d briefly paused to admire a family of ducks, Rey arrived the Robin Hood Inn. The inn was somewhat famous in Hadrian’s Wall lore as one of only two places with food for purchase between the major stopover points of Heddon-on-the-Wall and Chollerford, and Rey’s stomach growled at the appetizing smells drifting out from the open door. It was a bit early for lunch, but she’d only had some trail food for breakfast and her body was protesting mightily. “I’m calling elevenses,” she murmured to herself, moving decisively toward the door…

…and nearly crashing into Ben’s chest as he came out of it.

“Well, hello!” Ben smiled down at her as Rey let out an undignified squawk at coming unexpectedly nose-to-sternum with him. She stumbled backward a couple of steps, craned her neck upward to meet his eyes, and _gulped_.

Ben, sitting hunched over on a hostel sofa reading a book, or slouching against a stone wall while he ate, or waiting in the queue at a fish and chips shop as the day gave way to evening, was a big man. Now, standing upright in the overcast light of day, dressed in full hiking gear – a skintight black T-shirt, charcoal gray linen trousers, and a pair of fearsome-looking mountaineering boots – Ben was positively _massive_.

_“Darling, you are in so much trouble.”_

Belatedly, his greeting registered, and Rey was able to squeak out a response. “Uh, hi!” Clearing her throat and making a valiant attempt to recover her equanimity, she went on, “How’s your day going?”

“Good! I got an early start this morning because I wanted to look around Rudchester a bit. And we’re supposed to hit some fort remains in a couple more miles, and part of today is going to be walking in the actual vallum – that’s the Wall ditch – so…” He broke off and smiled. A _real_ smile, with both sides of his mouth, showing all his teeth. 

Rey realized belatedly that she hadn’t seen him do that yet. 

She realized in the exact same instant that she wanted to see him do it again.

“That’s great! I’m glad you’re seeing so many things that make you happy!”

He smiled again, a self-deprecating half-grin this time. “ _He’s going to make me work for another full smile,”_ she thought. _“Challenge accepted.”_ “Me too. And we’re not even at the really exciting stuff yet. That’s tomorrow.” He seemed to cut himself off again, before continuing. “But I won’t talk your ear off. I’m sure you’re hungry.” He gestured toward the doorway.

As if on cue, Rey’s stomach grumbled again. “I am. Small breakfast this morning. I take it you’ve already filled up?”

Ben bent at the waist to adjust his shoulder straps, which brought his head down within Rey’s reach. She squashed the sudden urge to tangle her fingers in his hair. “Aye. The carrot and coriander soup is really good, if you’re looking for a recommendation.”

“Cheers for that. See you later, then?”

Ben straightened again, tightened his hip strap, and smoothed his hair back from where it had fallen into his face. “Aye.” He hesitated for a moment, then seemed to make a split-second decision just as Rey turned to walk through the door. “Do you maybe want to eat together again tonight?” He asked the question so quickly that it almost came out sounding like one word. Rey whipped around to look at him with wide hazel eyes. His brown eyes were equally wide but steady, and color was slowly creeping into his cheeks. “You don’t have to decide right now. I just thought I’d go ahead and put the idea in your head…” It seemed like there was more he wanted to say, but he thinned his lips and didn’t go on.

Rey gave him a shy smile. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like to eat with you again, if you’re up for it. I like having company for dinner.”

Ben visibly relaxed. Rey hadn’t even realized how much tension he’d been holding in his body until it was released and he deflated, much like one of those giant blow-up rafts she, Rose, and Jannah had rented on a weekend trip to Mallorca to celebrate the end of their third year of uni. “Okay, great! Do you wanna come find me at the campsite when you get to Chollerford? Or-“

“Do you carry a mobile with you, Ben?” Rey asked, fishing her own out of her pocket. It was a genuine question. Rey had met walkers who completely unplugged from technology during their trips, leaving everything electronic at home except for the odd emergency beacon. She’d also met walkers at the other end of the spectrum, who carried tons of vlogging equipment and whose first priority at any stop was finding somewhere to charge it all.

“Oh. Yeah! That’d be easier, wouldn’t it?” _There_ was Ben’s full smile again. She noticed that his right canine tooth was slightly crooked, and decided that it made his smile even more endearing.

Rey opened her contacts and handed the mobile phone to him so he could input his number, then texted him so he’d have hers. Somewhere in the depths of his backpack, his own phone pinged. Before putting her phone back in her pocket, she noticed that he’d put his full name in her contacts: Ben Solo.

“Right, chow-time then! I’ll see you later, Ben! Good walking today!” On impulse, Rey took one of Ben’s hands and squeezed it briefly. He squeezed back, and let their fingers slowly slide apart as he walked backward for a few paces, before turning around to rejoin the trail and continue his hike.

Rey gave a little bounce as she finally turned and walked into the Robin Hood Inn.

***

An hour later, full of carrot and coriander soup plus a baked potato with all the fillings, Rey set out again. She’d been walking parallel to a B-class road since leaving Heddon-on-the-Wall, and she continued to follow it now, traveling ever westward. The terrain was level, and a quick double-check of the map had confirmed that she wouldn’t have to make any turns until she was nearly at Chollerford, so Rey allowed her mind to lapse into a state of daydreamy thoughtlessness as she walked on. An occasional car passed her on the road, and the occasional flock of sheep bleated curiously at her as the passed, the spring lambs wagging their tails furiously as they scurried away from her. 

As she passed through the tiny settlement of Halton Shields, it slowly dawned on Rey that the cars traveling down the B-road were passing her at eye-level. She stopped for a brief moment and took stock of her surroundings. The trail remained broad and unmistakable, but at some point it had dropped down into a wide, man-made ditch. In a sudden moment of clarity, Rey realized that she was walking in the vallum – the defensive ditch which ran parallel to the original Roman wall. She walked on, and in less than a mile, she reached some ruined stone foundations with an accompanying English Heritage plaque which declared them to be Halton Chesters Roman Fort.

“Humans have always wanted to leave a mark on this planet,” Rey recalled her grandfather saying, on one particular visit to York Minster when Rey was twelve or so. He’d loved cathedrals, and never passed up an opportunity to visit one when they traveled. “Leaving something of ourselves behind is part of our journey to find meaning in life. It’s why our ancestors made cave paintings. It’s why they arranged stones into circles, aligning with the solstices. It’s why they built cathedrals,” he’d said, gesturing around them at the nave they were slowly walking down. “Not only to honor the divine, but to say, ‘I was here.’”

And now, standing in a ditch that had been excavated 2000 years before, looking at her first proper Wall remains, Rey fancied that she could hear the voice of a faceless Roman, transplanted to the edge of an empire: _“I was here.”_

Rey smiled and walked on.

***

Rey crossed another A-road – the A68 this time – and bypassed the café there in favor of pressing on. The overcast sky was becoming darker, portending rain.

A few minutes later she encountered her first ladder-stile. A stone wall four or five feet high bisected the field she was traversing, but twin wooden ladders were installed over it, intersecting at the top and cheerfully emblazoned with the white acorn of the English National Trail network. Rey climbed up, and then down the matching ladder on the other side.

She walked through a stand of trees, emerging onto open moorland, interrupted only by occasional stone walls with more ladder stiles. Soft grass yielded under her boots and trekking poles, and she continued to propel herself along under an ever-lowering sky.

The first raindrops began to fall as she reached Heavenfield Battle Site, just as she was reading the English Heritage plaque cheerfully outlining the battle that had occurred there between the Bernicians and the Welsh, sometime in the seventh century. Rey retrieved her raincoat from her backpack as quickly as she could, taking the opportunity to stretch sore shoulder muscles as she did so. She wasn’t far from Chollerford now – maybe another two miles. Less than an hour if she could keep her pace up.

She forged on.

***

The rain lasted a mercifully short time, and had stopped by the time Rey descended along a tarmac road into Chollerford. The hard surface was unforgiving and unwelcome at the end of the long day, and Rey limped down the road to her home for the night, an unprepossessing B&B off the high street.

It was tempting to collapse onto the twin bed and stay there forever, but she resisted the temptation, instead dumping her backpack unceremoniously at the foot of the bed, stripping off her clothing, and heading directly for the shower in her ensuite.

Twenty minutes later she emerged, towel-clad, and feeling significantly more human. She dug through the pockets of her discarded trousers for her phone and sent her daily check-in text to Rose and Jannah. Then she saw that she had a text from Ben, about an hour old:

**< Ben Solo: _At the campsite. No rush, but let me know if you’re still up for dinner. >_ **

Rey smiled. Of course he was the type of person to write texts in complete sentences, with correct capitalization and punctuation. She texted back.

**< Rey: _hey!_** **_J_ ** **_just got here, still becoming human again lol. I’ll be up for dinner in about an hour if that’s okay? >_ **

Ben texted two minutes later, as Rey was working a comb through her sodden hair, the trivia gameshow “Pointless” playing on the television in the background.

**< Ben Solo: _More than okay. Do you want to meet at the George Hotel in an hour? They’re supposed to do really good burgers. >_**

**< Rey: _sounds perfect! >_ **

Rey was brought up short as she began rummaging through her backpack for clean clothes. Was this a date? It might be a date! Ben had asked her to dinner and she had said yes. Did Ben consider it a date?

Rey chewed her lip, considering. They were two people hiking Hadrian’s Wall with similar itineraries. They’d shared a meal the night before and enjoyed each other’s company. This could just be the same thing again. But as that thought crossed her mind, Rey realized that she _did_ , in fact, want this to be a date. 

It was time to face facts: Rey fancied Ben. He was tall, dark, and handsome in an uncommon way, with his sable-black hair and soulful brown eyes and prominent nose and a scattering of moles across his face. She was enjoying him being her shadow on this walk, and she was enjoying being his. And she wanted to know him better. “It’s a date,” she said out loud with a smile. 

Rey donned her “town clothes” – fitted jeans and a simple, deep violet blouse she was fond of – and applied some mascara and lipgloss before setting out to meet Ben.

***

The clouds which had obscured the sky all day were finally clearing as Rey shuffled down the street to the George Hotel. It wasn’t hard to find – it was the focal point of the town, positioned adjacent to the bridge over the River North Tyne (a tributary of the same Tyne Rey had followed through Newcastle), and she could practically see it from her window at the B&B.

Ben was loitering outside the hotel’s main door, wearing a black hoodie jumper and jeans, and he smiled as he saw Rey approaching with careful, mincing steps. “Long day today, huh?”

Rey grimaced. “You’ve got that right. Do you mind if we sit outside?” she asked, eyeing the outdoor seating which looked out on the river. “The sun’s finally coming out.”

“I don’t mind.” Rey and Ben made their way to a table at the edge of the outdoor seating area and a server came to take their orders.

They sat quietly for a minute, sipping their beers and waiting for their food. Rey marshaled her courage. “ _’Getting to know you’ questions,”_ she thought. “Why did you decide to go to school in Glasgow?”

“The university has an excellent archaeology program.” Ben paused for a moment, seeming to consider something, then continued. “And I wanted to get out of the States for awhile. For a long while, if possible.”

“Why?” Ben didn’t answer her right away. “You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want.”

“No, I do want.” Ben paused again, taking a sip of his beer, and then continued on, looking out at the river and not at her. “My mother is in politics. She was a state Senator for most of my childhood. When I was 17 she finally got elected to Congress. I don’t know if you follow US politics at all, but things are tense there right now.” He thinned his lips and shrugged. “I suppose they’re tense here too. But by that time, I was tired of being a politician’s son. I wanted to go somewhere where no one knew me, or had any preconceived notions about me. So when I applied to college – university, I should say – I only applied to schools abroad. Canada, the UK, Australia, pretty much anywhere in the Anglophone world. And I got into the University of Glasgow and then just…never left. I finished uni, was lucky enough to get work with an employer who would sponsor my visa, did that for a few years, then decided to go back for a graduate degree. So all told, I’ve been here for about eleven years now.”

Ben was quiet for a moment, then continued. “I love Scotland. Truly, I do. I feel like people are much realer there than…” He ran a hand through his hair, seeming to be searching for words. “My mom was already kind of a big deal by the time I was born. My uncle is too, in a different field. That’s a whole different story.” He waved a hand impatiently. “The point is, I went to private schools. Prep schools. With spoiled kids from moneyed families. There’s so much pretentiousness among that part of American society, and I hate it. But everyone I’ve ever met in Scotland has just been genuine. Just themselves. Wintertime sucks there, but I’ve never wanted to leave.”

A beat passed, and Ben looked abashed, as if he were afraid he’d said too much. “That’s probably a longer answer than you were looking for. Sorry, I know you were just trying to make conversation-“

“No please, don’t apologize, Ben! I think it’s wonderful that you’re passionate about things. Please don’t feel like you need to shut yourself up when you talk to me. When you talk about things you feel strongly about.”

And then Ben looked at her like she’d hung the moon and all the stars, and Rey flushed under his gaze.

At that moment their food arrived – thick hamburgers with multiple toppings for both of them – and conversation ceased for several minutes while they tucked in. Rey snuck several glances at Ben as he tore into his burger, a coquettish voice in her head murmuring _“What that mouth do?”_

Her lascivious thoughts were derailed when Ben asked her, “So, why chemistry?”

Rey took a sip of her beer while considering her answer. “It’s math, thinly disguised as science. I’ve always thought so. There’s an order to it, a rationality, which I like. Chemistry equations are like logic puzzles, and I’ve always liked that.”

“Do you know what you’d like to do with it next?” This was a question Rey had grown to despise over the last year or two, but from Ben’s mouth it sounded genuinely curious, rather than condescending or rote.

“I’m working as a research assistant at the University of Durham just now, considering my next move. I’m actually pretty content at the moment. I live with two roommates, who I adore. And I make enough money to see to all my needs, plus a couple trips like this every year. So I’m not actively looking for anything more at the moment.” Rey shrugged. “Maybe in a year or two.”

Ben was nodding as if that made perfect sense. “I think there’s something to be said for being content where you are, as you are.” A few minutes passed in companionable silence as they finished their burgers. “So…” Ben began with a mischievous glint in his eye, “where do you want to go hiking next?”

Rey smiled. “Cornwall. I think I mentioned I’ve been doing the South West Coast Path a bit at a time?” Ben nodded. “I’ve got the next chunk planned, probably for early September, right before fall term starts at the university and I get really busy with work. After that I’m not sure. I was thinking of Wales or Scotland. I haven’t done much walking in either place, yet.”

“Let me know when you come to Scotland and I’ll take you Munro-bagging.”

Rey dared a flirtatious smile. “Will we be sleeping in the heather, wrapped only in our plaids?”

Ben smiled back and winked. “Only if you want.” Warmth settled in Rey’s belly as they held each others’ gaze for a loaded moment.

The server interrupted the moment by coming to take their plates and leave their bills, telling them that they could settle up at the bar indoors. Rey and Ben lingered at the table a little longer, watching the sky change colors as the sun began to set.

“You got your first bits of wall today,” Rey suddenly said to Ben with a grin.

Ben grinned back. “I did, didn’t I?”

“How did you like them?”

Ben sighed contentedly, which was answer enough. Rey couldn’t help giggling at him, just a bit. “I don’t know if I can even explain why archaeology means as much to me as it does. It’s just…the fact that we can see how people lived…the way ordinary people lived their day-to-day lives, if we just do some digging. It’s _wild_ to me. It’s like they’re speaking out of the past, saying ‘I was here.’” 

Rey looked at him with wide eyes, a slow grin spreading across her face. “You and my granddad would have gotten along _famously_.” 

They sat companionably together for a few minutes more as dusk continued to settle over the town, Ben watching the river with his chin resting on one hand, and Rey leaning back in her chair, watching as the sky continued to change colors. “It’s the crags day tomorrow,” Ben said after a while.

Rey smiled. “That it is. I can’t wait.”

“Do you want to walk together? At least to start?” Rey looked down from the sky to see that pink was creeping into Ben’s cheeks again, but he kept his voice and gaze steady on her. “I know you can handle yourself, but I like having a partner on strenuous days.”

Rey had mostly hiked on her own since her grandfather had grown too frail to accompany her on long trips. Walking with company was pleasant but could often mean having to change her natural walking cadence, and an inability to linger where she liked if others in the party wanted to push on. But she knew without even thinking about it that yes, she very much wanted to walk with Ben tomorrow. And something about how he said the word “partner” was…doing things to her. Making her think about home ownership and nursery themes. _“Down, girl.”_

“Yes. You’re right, it’d be good to have company going over the Pennines.” _“And in bed afterward,”_ the lascivious part of her brain supplied. Rey determinedly kept that thought to herself. “What time were you thinking of heading out tomorrow?”

“Is half past seven too early?”

“No, not at all. I’m going to Once Brewed tomorrow; you?”

“No fixed destination tomorrow. I was planning to just wild-camp somewhere.”

Rey nodded. “Shall we meet out front of the hotel at half-seven, then?”

Ben nodded back. “Deal.”

***

In due course they meandered inside to the bar to pay for their meals. Rey was grateful that Ben didn’t try to pay for hers – she took pride in being able to pay for things herself. They both leaned against the bar while the barkeep ran their debit cards, and Rey decided to be daring, standing close enough to Ben that their shoulders touched – or more accurately, so that the tip of her shoulder touched the middle of his bicep. Close, but not so close that he couldn’t pull away without making it awkward. Ben didn’t pull away, though; in fact, if anything he seemed to shift his weight gradually toward her, so that they were standing hip-to-hip as well as shoulder-to-shoulder by the time the barkeep handed back their cards. The sleeve of his hoodie rested along her bare arm, and it felt strangely intimate, as well as warm and comforting.

Then they walked outside, back to where Ben had been waiting for her before dinner, and where they’d agreed to meet in the morning. “Which way are you?” Rey asked him.

Ben gestured to the left, where Rey could just barely see the sign advertising a campsite a little ways down the road. “You?”

Rey gestured in the opposite direction.

“I guess this is good night, then,” Ben said.

“Yes,” Rey replied. Then, very much wanting to feel that hoodie against her skin again and before she could lose her nerve, Rey pulled him into a hug, winding her arms around his waist.

Ben didn’t hesitate to reciprocate, wrapping his arms around her shoulders, and they simply held each other, there on the front patio of the George Hotel under the late spring twilight. Rey rested her cheek against Ben’s chest and closed her eyes, and she felt him rest his cheek against her hair for a long moment, before turning his head to rest his mouth on the same spot. Not a kiss exactly, just a soft touch as they swayed together slightly, both reluctant to part.

Ben eventually loosened his grip but didn’t let go, pulling back just enough to touch his forehead to Rey’s. “Sleep well, _mo chridhe_. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Rey playfully bumped their noses before pulling back. “See you in the morning, Ben.”

Rey walked back up the street to her B&B, a snatch of a half-forgotten song from her childhood echoing through her head: _“We’re walking in the air, we’re floating in the moonlit sky…”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who has read, bookmarked, commented, and/or left kudos on this fic so far! 
> 
> A bit of housekeeping: Chapter 4 is partway written and I am cautiously optimistic that I will have it up on-schedule next Thursday. However, updates may slow down after that. I am currently in physician assistant school and my free time is at a premium. But be assured that I am working on this fic during every free moment that I can snatch, and I am committed to finishing it!
> 
> [Ladder stile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stile#/media/File:Ladder_stile_Snowdonia.jpg).
> 
> [The song in Rey's head at the end](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3hpIUSjU8E).


	4. Day 4: Chollerford to Once Brewed, 13 miles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a very brief discussion of religion in this chapter. If you'd prefer not to read such things, skip the three short paragraphs immediately after the sentence "She waited to ask it until they’d safely darted across the B-class road which had been their on-again-off-again companion for most of the morning," and pick back up with the sentence beginning "They lapsed back into companionable silence..."

Rey woke the next morning with a smile on her face.

She would be starting the famous crags section of the Hadrian’s Wall trail today. It was widely regarded as the most picturesque section of the trail, and it was a day she’d been looking forward to for months, ever since she’d begun planning the trip. 

The fact that she’d be walking at least part of the day with Ben just made it even better.

The B&B’s landlady commented on Rey’s happy mood as she served her breakfast. “I don’t know which is giving off the brighter sunshine this morning, the sun or your smile, pet!” Rey looked out the window to see that the sun was indeed shining, with hardly a cloud in sight. It boosted her mood even more as she downed her eggs, bacon, sausage, and toast, before going back to her room to finish her preparations for the day. 

The weather looked promising, but the day’s walk would be over rough terrain, so Rey dressed with worst-case eventualities in mind. Her gaiters came out of her backpack for the first time all trip, and she strapped and buckled them over her boots to prevent any rain or standing water from coming in and wetting her feet. She also donned a rain jacket and carefully bunned up her hair.

Ben was waiting at their agreed-upon meeting spot when Rey arrived at seven thirty, and he smiled when he saw her approaching – another real smile, with both sides of his mouth and all his teeth. Rey observed that he was dressed for a hard day, just as she was: the mountaineering boots were back, with gaiters similar to her own covering them, and his hair was tied back out of his face. Rey also observed that he had stubble on his cheeks this morning, where he’d always been clean-shaven before. She thought it made him look rather rakish.

“Morning!” she chirped to him, shifting her poles to one hand in order to wrap the other arm over his shoulders in a one-armed hug.

“Good morning,” he replied, leaning down to snake his arms under her backpack and around her waist, returning the embrace. He held her tightly for a beat before releasing her and looking down into her face with a smile. “Are you ready?”

“Definitely! Let’s go.”

***

Rey had gone to bed with some trepidation the night before, her habitual worries about walking with other people returning. Rey was tall for a woman, but Ben had a good eight inches on her, and his legs were so much longer than hers – would he be annoyed if he needed to slow down to match her pace? What if one of them needed breaks more often than the other? _“We’ll deal with it,”_ she finally told herself sternly. _“We didn’t even commit to walking together all day. It’ll be fine.”_

Rey quickly discovered that she needn’t have worried. It was as if she and Ben had been hiking together for years. Unlike Rey, Ben walked without trekking poles, relying only on the momentum of his own legs to carry him. The result was that he only had to slacken his cadence the tiniest bit to stay with Rey as they left Chollerford and climbed gently out of the valley of the River North Tyne, passing through the village of Walwick as they did so.

The walking was gentle enough to allow for conversation, and they found themselves discussing non-hiking hobbies as they walked. 

“I like baking,” Rey told Ben as they she climbed a ladder stile to leave the road and enter a pasture just past Walwick. “Cookies, brownies, fairy cakes…lately I’ve been experimenting with more ambitious stuff, like bigger cakes with more adventurous flavors.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask, but what’s an adventurous cake flavor?” Ben asked as he negotiated the ladder stile and dropped into the pasture with her.

“Well, I made a strawberry champagne cake for my flatmate Rose’s birthday last year. Jannah wants Earl Grey and lavender for hers next month.”

“That sounds amazing, actually.”

Rey smiled. “I want to try breadmaking soon. And if I had access to a pasture like this –“ she gestured around them, encompassing both the pasture they were currently traversing and the horse paddock visible nearby – “I’d raise sheep and goats and use the milk to make cheese. I’ve always wanted to learn cheesemaking.”

“Let me know when you open your artisanal bread and cheese shop and I’ll be your most loyal customer.”

Their talk continued in this vein for awhile – Rey learned that Ben was a voracious reader and the type of foodie that actually read restaurant guides; Ben learned that Rey had never learned to ride a bicycle; they learned that they both loved pub trivia and television quiz shows. All the while they continued to walk side-by-side in an easy rhythm, falling into single-file to cross stiles and gates.

Before long they reached a section of intact Roman wall – the longest they’d seen yet, and they lapsed into a companionable silence as the ground grew rockier and more of their concentration was needed to avoid turning an ankle. Then they reached another section of vallum called Limestone Corner, and in almost the same instant, the Whin Sill hove into view.

Rey and Ben both slackened their pace slightly as they gazed ahead at this distinctive section of the Pennine Hills, rising broadly from the south to drop away into sharp crags to the north. The day was clear enough to just barely make out the Wall, following the crests of the undulating crags as it made its way ever westward to the other side of England. They exchanged eager smiles.

“We’re not far from Brocolitia,” Ben said. “Do you mind if we take a break there? I’d like to take a look around.”

“Not at all,” Rey replied. Then she gestured toward the distant crags with her head. “A break before we get up there would be good.”

***

Brocolitia Roman Fort, and the adjacent Temple of Mithras, sat on marshy ground. So Rey spread her raincoat on the surface of the parking lot which served the tourists driving in to see both ruins and sat on it, contentedly eating the apple from the packed lunch her B&B in Chollerford had provided. Little remained of Brocolitia except its earthworks, but Ben still looked like a kid in a sweets shop as he made a slow circuit around the ruins.

Rey couldn’t help but smile. Ben’s enthusiasm for archaeological remains was infectious. What was more, his joy for the historical aspects of this walk reflected her own joy for the natural beauty of it. They were complementary, fitting together like puzzle pieces.

Rey watched as Ben made his way over to the Mithraeum, which was far more intact, the stone walls rising two feet up from the ground and many of the interior stones still in place. His body language visibly changed when he set foot inside the walls, and it took Rey a long moment to put a finger on what was different.

He was walking around it the way her grandfather used to walk around in churches and cathedrals – with soft, lithe footfalls, hands clasped behind his back and a contemplative expression on his face. 

Suddenly feeling like an intruder, Rey stood and began stretching her legs and hips, facing away from the Mithraeum to give Ben privacy for whatever devotions he might be practicing. A few minutes later she heard his footsteps as he made his way back to her.

“Ready?” he asked, eyeing the crags again.

“Ready,” she replied.

As they re-shouldered their backpacks and continued on, negotiating the marshy ground and a burn crossing, Rey turned a question over in her mind. She waited to ask it until they’d safely darted across the B-class road which had been their on-again-off-again companion for most of the morning.

“Do you practice that religion?” Ben looked at her quizzically. Rey hurried to explain. “The way you walked around the temple ruins back there…you looked just the way my granddad did whenever we’d visit a cathedral.”

“Oh! No. I just think all places of worship deserve respect and reverence. My dad is a Christian and my mother is Jewish, so I was raised as a mixture of both. Now that I’m an adult I sort of draw on a bit of everything.”

Rey thought for a long moment. “I suppose I’m sort of the same. I was nominally raised Church of England, and I go to services at Durham Cathedral from time to time because my flatmate Jannah works there, but…yeah. ‘Drawing on a bit of everything’ is a good way to put it.”

They lapsed back into companionable silence as they passed through the small village of Carraw, negotiating flagstones over muddy ground as they went. They skirted around a stand of trees and crossed another small field, and then they were officially in Northumberland National Park. Sewingshields Crags, the first major crag system of the Whin Sill they’d be crossing, loomed ever nearer.

The terrain began climbing gently, and not long after that, they reached their first milecastle. There wasn’t much of it to see beyond earthworks and some scattered stones, but only a little further on, near another stand of trees, lay the remains of a turret which was much more intact. 

They’d begun walking in the early morning and it was now nearly noon, so one wordless look between them was sufficient to agree that this would be their lunch stop. Rey spread her raincoat on the ground and dug through her backpack for her packed lunch, while Ben retrieved a Jetboil from his own backpack and began boiling water for noodles. 

Rey gazed at the landscape around them as she slowly ate her ham and cheese sandwich and potato crisps. They were nearly at the foot of Sewingshields Crags now, and the first of several long uphill pulls on the day’s itinerary was imminent. The sun was still shining steadily, and the blue of the sky was marred only by the barest wisps of white cloud. She could faintly hear the lowing of cows from a nearby pasture. Seized by a sudden impulse, she got her phone out and recorded a brief video of their surroundings, panning around the view and ending with a shot of Ben, perched on one of the turret stones, devouring his noodles. He gave a little wave when he saw her phone pointed at him, seeming completely unfazed to have been caught on camera with ramen hanging inelegantly out of his mouth.

Putting her phone away and finishing the remains of her lunch, Rey lay back on her jacket with a contented sigh and stretched her arms overhead, closing her eyes against the brightness of the sky. A few minutes later she felt Ben settle next to her, and she cracked an eye open at him to see him smiling down at her from a seated position. “Penny for your thoughts?”

Rey hummed and closed her eyes again. “I’m just happy.”

Ben hummed in agreement, and she felt his weight settle more heavily next to her. She peeped up at him again and saw that he was reclined next to her, propped up on his elbows, taking in the scenery as she had done.

They stayed like that for a while, digesting their food and basking in the sun, occasionally talking about inconsequential things but mostly just taking in the quiet ambience of their surroundings. Rey fancied she could hear the low hum of the planet turning beneath her. She let her senses stretch out further – to the grass growing beneath her, to the stones nearby, to the new lambs and calves in the pasture, to the man by her side. _“Maybe we’ve fallen through time,”_ she thought. _“We’re just a boy and a girl, two thousand years ago or maybe two thousand years in the future, sitting by the edge of the world as the sun keeps wheeling above us and the ground waits to enfold us, many years or a moment from now…”_

The spell was broken sometime later as Ben bestirred himself and she heard him rummaging through his backpack again. She reluctantly opened her eyes and sat up, just in time for him to extend a small tube of sunscreen to her. “You’re getting a wee bit burnt, _mo chridhe_.”

Rey smiled her thanks as she took the sunscreen from him and rubbed it onto her face. He’d called her that last night, too. She’d have to ask him what it meant sometime, although she thought she half-remembered hearing it in a song on one of her grandfather’s favorite folk albums.

Ben took the sunscreen back from her and replaced it in his backpack as Rey got to her feet. Regarding the clear sky again, she decided to tempt fate and stuffed her rain jacket into her own backpack before re-shouldering it. She regarded the hill ahead of them once again.

“Well, it’s not going to climb itself!”

***

An hour and a half later they were at Housesteads Fort, catching their breath.

The pull up Sewingshields Crag had been relatively gentle, yet relentless. But the view from the top had been stunning – they could see the small lakes of Broomlee Lough and Greenlee Lough ahead of them, as well as more of the Whin Sill undulating away into the distance.

They’d descended into Busy Gap and then immediately started ascending again, to Kennel Crag. Rey had never had more cause to be grateful for Ben’s archaeology passion than when they’d reached Housesteads Fort, and she could sit down and breathe while Ben explored. Housesteads was the most complete fort system they’d come across yet, and even Rey was awed by it. The turret remains where they’d eaten lunch had been impressive in their own way, but she could tell that this fort must have been a force to be reckoned with in its heyday.

Ben left his explorations and came over to where Rey was lounging against the Roman wall. It had reappeared just before they reached Housesteads, and it looked like it was here to stay for a good many miles to come. Rey started to gather herself to stand, but Ben gestured for her to keep sitting and crouched next to her instead.

“I’m going to linger here for a bit, but I won’t be offended if you want to keep going. I’m going to want to spend some time at the next few milecastles and at Vindolanda too, and I don’t want to hold you up if you’d rather press on.”

Rey considered for a moment. They were only about three miles from Once Brewed now, and spending almost the entire day with Ben had been genuinely wonderful. He was easy to talk to, easy to be quiet with, and generally easy to be around in a way that made her heart flutter and her stomach buzz. But she had to admit that she was tired. The morning had been a long march, and she still had quite a bit of climbing left before the day would be over. She wanted to build some momentum to finish the day, and she wouldn’t be able to do that if Ben wanted to stop and sightsee. 

And she certainly didn’t want to keep Ben from his sightseeing, either. She knew him well enough by now to know that this was important to him, and she was intuitive enough to have picked up that he’d been made to feel it was unimportant in the past. The way he seemed to stop himself from talking about certain topics, the way he’d been slow to really open up about what interested him…Rey decided that she didn’t want to ever make him feel like that. And if that meant parting ways for the day, as much as she didn’t want to, then so be it.

“I’m going to push on.” Ben nodded, seeming to expect that answer. “Will I see you tomorrow?” Rey hated how small and forlorn her voice sounded.

Ben nodded again, more vigorously. “Aye. I’m for Lanercost tomorrow. There’s a B&B there that has tent pitches in the back garden.”

A brilliant smile lit up Rey’s face. “I think I’m staying at the same B&B.”

An equally brilliant smile lit up Ben’s, and he stood swiftly, catching Rey’s hands in his and pulling her up with him. Almost before Rey had time to marvel at the ease with which he’d hauled her up – almost as if she weighed nothing – he’d caught her tightly around the waist and lifted her off her feet in a bear hug as she shrieked with surprise and laughter. “My shadow,” he murmured affectionately into the side of her neck. Rey shivered a little at the feeling of his lips and breath on her neck, and he carefully set her back on her feet.

“Be safe the rest of the day,” Rey said as she prepared to set off again. “Enjoy your forts.” She smiled as she said this, trying to impart that she meant it sincerely.

Ben smiled back, another true smile with both sides of his mouth, and she knew that he’d understood.

***

Rey passed most of the next three miles in an almost meditative state of “one foot in front of the other.” She toiled up and down crags and past Crag Lough, which lay at the very foot of the Whin Sill where it dropped away to the north. She got her phone back out to take more pictures.

She paused briefly at the top of Hotbank Crags, where a wooden markerpost marked the spot where the Pennine Way and Hadrian’s Wall met. The two trails ran concurrently for about nine miles, from this point westward to Greenhead, where Hadrian’s Wall would continue west and the Pennine Way would turn south. Being on the Pennine Way again inevitably made Rey think of her grandfather, and her eyes misted with tears. She missed him. She missed him terribly.

“I hope you’re proud of me, Grandpa,” she said softly as the gazed northward, where the Pennine Way ribboned over the moors on its way to the Scottish border. Then she whispered, so softly it was little more than a breath, “I think you would have liked him.”

After passing Crag Lough, Rey negotiated her most precipitous descent of the day, down into Sycamore Gap. This was perhaps the single most famous spot on Hadrian’s Wall: a lone sycamore tree rose up from the bare landscape, framed by steep crags on either side. Besides being the unofficial Hadrian’s Wall logo, it had appeared in a couple of films, and today many tourists were taking advantage of the fine weather to crowd around it and marvel.

Rey thought the tree looked otherworldly in a rather unsettling way, and she paused only briefly before beginning her ascent of the equally precipitous Reel Crags. This was the final push before she’d descend off-trail to her hostel in Once Brewed.

“Well, it’s not gonna climb itself,” she murmured to herself, echoing her own words from earlier. 

***

Getting to the bottom of Reel Crags was officially the end of Rey’s day on Hadrian’s Wall. But to get to the hostel in Once Brewed, she had to descend all the way to the plain on the south side of the Whin Sill, walking along a country lane. The tarmac put a damper on what had otherwise been a thoroughly enjoyable day, as did the group of noisy teenagers in her dorm room at the hostel. Rey’s heart sank as she realized she was likely in for a restless night.

But she tried to make the best of it. The hostel was new and very handsomely decorated, and it served its own food. Rey showered, and then texted back and forth with Rose and Jannah as she ate her dinner of lasagna and salad, sending them some of the pictures she’d taken earlier. She sent them the video she’d taken at lunchtime, too.

**_< Rose: Who’s the hottie? ;D>_ **

**_< Jannah: Agreed, he is a snacc>_ **

**_< Rose: Snacc? Id say hes an entire MEAL>_ **

**_< Rey: His name is Ben ^_^>_ **

**_< Jannah: We require details in full when you get back, Rey>_ **

Rey smiled as she put her phone away, and then decided that she’d read a magazine in the communal lounge for a while, hoping that the teenagers’ chaperones would make them go to bed eventually and then she could get some shuteye of her own.

But she was exhausted from the day and she retreated to the dorm as soon as the sun was down, which was earlier than she’d planned. The teens were in bed but far from settled, continually whispering and tittering among themselves. Two hours passed and every time Rey came close to drifting off, one of them would guffaw at something and she’d wake again.

Rey cursed herself for forgetting to bring earplugs.

Then her phone buzzed. 

She checked it with annoyance, wondering who on earth would be texting her at this time of night. _“Probably Vodafone, with some stupid advert,”_ she thought.

Her breath caught when Ben’s name lit up the screen.

**< Ben Solo: _If you’re still awake, come outside and look at the stars. >_**

In an instant, Rey’s exhaustion and sour mood were gone. She rifled through her backpack for a long-sleeved shirt and retrieved her sandals from under the bed, making no effort to be quiet. The teens had afforded her no such courtesy; let them have a taste of their own medicine. Slipping her room key and her phone into a pocket, she hurried out of the dormitory and then out of the hostel.

She looked up at the sky and caught her breath.

Durham didn’t suffer from light pollution the way London and Newcastle did, but even the clearest sky there couldn’t compare to what she was seeing now. This part of Northumberland was the heart of dark sky country, and Rey could see more stars than she’d ever seen in her life, spread above her like a blanket.

Rey simply stared open-mouthed for several long minutes. Then she instinctively turned northward and looked for Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. She didn’t know many constellations, but her grandfather had made a point of teaching her those two, because they made useful navigational aids. The North Star was at the end of Ursa Minor’s tail…find that and she could always find her way to where she needed to go. The expanse of stars and planets above her made Rey feel very small and yet very comforted. The sun-warmed earth beneath her back had made her feel much the same way earlier that day. 

Thinking of that made her think of Ben again. She pulled her phone out and texted him.

**_< Rey: Where are u right now?>_ **

Ben texted back only a few seconds later.

**_< Ben Solo: Just off the parking area between the crags, up above Once Brewed.>_ **

Rey hesitated for a moment, then thought of the way Ben had bear-hugged her and murmured against her neck just before they’d parted.

**_< Rey: Im just down the hill, may I join u?>_ **

**_< Ben: Definitely. It’s a prime stargazing spot.>_ **

**_< Rey: See u in a few mins!!!>_ **

Rey hurried up the same lane she’d come down earlier that very day, cursing her foolishness for not also grabbing her headtorch before leaving the hostel. She knew exactly which parking lot Ben was referring to, but the complete lack of streetlights – of lights of any kind, save the stars overhead – made the trek somewhat eerie. Her muscles complained at the extra demands after a long day of walking under an overwarm sun, but Rey ignored them.

Ben was waiting for her outside his tent, his own headtorch ignited to guide her way. He was wearing his black hoodie again, but the night was mild enough that he didn’t need much else other than a pair of tracksuit bottoms. His sleepwear, she supposed. Rey came into his arms and briefly hugged him around his middle.

“How was the rest of your day?” she asked.

“Fantastic. Yours?”

“Good. Thank you for giving me an excuse to get out of that hostel, though.”

“Anytime, _mo chridhe_. Come on, let’s look at the stars.”

Ben flopped full-length on the ground and she sat next to him, reclined on her elbows, unconsciously mirroring their positions from the turret as they both gazed skyward. Ben’s knowledge of the planets and constellations was more extensive than Rey’s, and he pointed out the ones he knew. As the night deepened the stars seemed to grow even brighter, and they both made identical sounds of awe as a shooting star swept overhead.

Rey looked down, caught Ben’s gaze in the starlight and held it. A tendril of brown hair fell into her face, and Ben reached up to smooth it back behind her ear, eyes never leaving hers. His hand lingered. 

“What does ‘ _mo chridhe_ ’ mean?” she asked softly.

Ben stiffened for the briefest moment, but didn’t look away or move his hand. “It’s Scottish Gaelic for ‘my heart,’” he said with equal softness.

Rey began to lean down, going slowly to give him time to turn his head or look away. He did neither.

Their lips met in the lightest, sweetest of kisses. Rey let her lips linger over his, just barely touching, and after a moment he leaned up just slightly to kiss her again.

And again.

Their kisses were warm and unhurried, but when Rey tentatively teased Ben’s lips with her tongue he responded immediately, opening to her and deepening their embrace. Rey was still up on one elbow, half on top of him, and just as her arm began to give way, Ben snaked a strong arm around her waist, both supporting her and holding her close. His other hand cradled the back of her neck, tangling fingers in her hair. He kissed her with insistence, as if he’d been born to do nothing else, and it made Rey’s breath catch and her head spin.

Eventually they both had to stop for air, but they separated only a little, foreheads almost touching. Then Ben kissed her again, tenderly. “My shadow,” he whispered. “My heart.”

The stars danced overhead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rey's thoughts while lying in the sun after eating lunch by the turret are inspired partly by Luke's First Lesson from TLJ, and partly by [Leonard Berstein's thoughts on Stravinsky's Rite of Spring](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kyso5VmZ6g&t=990s) (the relevant bit starts at about 16:30 and ends around 17:15).


	5. Day 5: Once Brewed to Lanercost, 14 miles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the lack of an update last week! Hopefully this ABSOLUTE UNIT of a 9,000-word chapter makes up for it!
> 
> Nota Bene: The fic earns its M-rating in this chapter, so mind the updated tags. If you prefer not to read scenes of a sexual nature, stop reading when you get to a long line of asterisks (*******) and pick up again when you see another long line of asterisks.

Rey woke muzzy and disoriented the following morning. At first she was only dimly aware of being ensconced in a pleasant cocoon of warmth, and she instinctively tried to snuggle more firmly into it. Then she slowly became aware that someone was shaking her shoulder and speaking quietly into her ear.

“Rey, sweetheart, you need to wake up.”

Rey surfaced to awareness at last. The warm cocoon was Ben’s sleeping bag, complete with Ben himself.

After their protracted makeout session under the stars the night before, Ben had gallantly offered to let Rey stay the night in his tent, rather than have her walk back down the hill to the hostel in pitch darkness. They’d both squeezed themselves into his very comfortable and very expensive-feeling sleeping bag, Rey’s back to Ben’s front, and Rey had passed her most pleasant night’s sleep since leaving Durham. 

They were still more or less in that position now, but Ben was up on one elbow, gently shaking her awake. She smiled up at him. “Good morning.”

He smiled and leaned down to drop a kiss on her lips. “Good morning. I’m sorry to wake you so early _mo leannan_ , but it’s going to rain soon and I need to get the tent packed away before it starts.”

Rey yawned and stretched. “Alright. What time is it, anyway?”

“About half five.” He scattered more kisses across her neck and jaw. “I’m sorry, I wanted to let you sleep more. But the weather won’t wait, and packing this tent away when it’s wet is a pain.”

“S’okay, I’ll just sleep a bit more at the hostel.” She moved to roll over onto her back. There wasn’t quite enough room in the sleeping bag to accommodate her on her back and Ben on his side, so he ended up half on top of her, one of his thighs wedged between hers. They were both still fully clothed in their sleepwear, but Rey nevertheless felt a pleasant heat creep into her belly and lower, and her toes curled. “I’ll see you later?”

Ben nodded down at her. “At Lanercost, if not before. I’ll be lingering at Wall sites again today, weather permitting, so you might catch me up.”

Rey leaned up for another kiss and Ben obliged her, parting her lips with his tongue. After kissing Ben for the first time last night, Rey found that she didn’t want ever to stop. He kissed her with intentionality, like he was trying to memorize every detail of her mouth with his own.

His stubble, longer than yesterday, scratched her face, and Rey broke away giggling. Ben laid one last, smacking kiss on her jaw and then began extricating himself from the sleeping bag. Rey crawled out herself, and then out of the open tent fly. She realized that Ben must have reached over her to unzip it and check the sky before waking her.

As she stretched cramped muscles, Ben crawled out of the tent after her to begin his preparations to strike camp. “Go careful today,” she said. “There’s still a lot of the Whin Sill left.”

“I will. You too, _mo chridhe_.”

They exchanged a final, lingering kiss, and then Rey started back down the hill to Once Brewed. She let her mind wander sleepily as she walked. Last night hadn’t been her first night in a tent – she and her grandfather had done some camping on the more remote stretches of the Pennine Way – but it had been by far her most pleasant. She smiled and blushed as she recalled her and Ben’s kisses, and caught her breath a little at the memory of the way they’d been pressed together in the sleeping bag. They hadn’t done anything more than sleep, but sharing that space – Ben’s bed and home and shelter on the trail – had still felt more intimate than anything she’d ever done with a boyfriend.

Rey giggled and bit her lip. She wasn’t thinking too far into the future just yet – she never did while on these trips. In addition to immersing herself in beautiful surroundings, Rey’s hiking trips were also an exercise in being in the moment: in taking each day and its challenges and pleasures individually, without worrying overmuch about what the next day would bring. But after last night, Rey knew she wanted more of Ben in her life after this hike was done. 

And considering the way he kissed her and spoke Gaelic love-words to her, she knew he did too. 

And for now, that was enough. _More_ than enough.

The village of Once Brewed was still asleep as Rey strolled through it, back to her hostel. It was an incongruous little place. The B-road which had been her distant-but-constant companion while traversing the Whin Sill ran through it, and while the signs visible to westbound motorists all said “Once Brewed,” the signs for the eastbound motorists said “Twice Brewed.” The inn she was walking past now, with its weather-forecasting stone hanging near the front entrance, was called the Twice Brewed Inn. (Her hostel, attempting to avoid confusion, merely called itself “The Sill.”) While doing research for this trip, Rey had found that various websites and guidebooks used both names or either interchangeably. There were various stories as to how this odd duality had come about, dating back to the Wars of the Roses. Rey had decided to simply take the idiosyncrasy in stride. 

The obnoxious teens were miraculously gone when Rey arrived back at her hostel room, and she decided she’d snatch another hour or two of sleep before beginning her own day. Snuggling into the duvet on her narrow bottom bunk was a poor substitute for Ben’s sleeping bag, but it would do.

***

When Rey woke again an hour and a half later, it was properly raining. She groaned.

Truthfully, she’d gotten very, very lucky with the weather on this trip so far. Apart from a bit of drizzle on the first and third days, it had stayed dry. “Guess I was overdue,” she grumbled to herself.

She groused into the hostel’s cafeteria for a hot breakfast, and then returned to her room to begin her preparations. Today would be a day for waterproofs.

Rey’s waterproof overtrousers and her backpack’s raincover now saw daylight for the first time since leaving Durham. She tugged the overtrousers on over a pair of warm leggings, and donned her rain jacket over a long-sleeved shirt, cinching the hood tight around her face. She checked to make sure her gaiters were firmly in place over her boots, and then secured the raincover over her backpack. 

She realized with a pang that she’d forgotten to bring gloves. Her hands would just have to get wet, then. She’d be crossing the highest point on Hadrian’s Wall today and she’d definitely need her trekking poles to get there.

Rey checked out of the hostel, squared her shoulders, and marched out into the rain. After a final trek up the same country lane that had brought her to Ben’s tent the night before, she was back on the trail.

She immediately began ascending steadily. It was windy up on the crags, and a look at the map during breakfast had told her that she’d be getting hardly any tree cover until she was off the Whin Sill. And there were still about seven miles of Whin Sill to go.

In time the climb leveled off, and Rey felt a thrill as she caught sight of a stone trig point near the lip of the crags. She made her way to it, triumphantly smacked a hand on it, and peered out of her rain hood at the landscape around her. She was officially at the top of Winshields Crags, the highest point on Hadrian’s Wall at 1132 feet. She gingerly took her phone out of a waterproof pocket in her jacket to rapidly take a selfie to mark the occasion, and to send Rose and Jannah later.

Then she put her head down and pressed on, ever westward.

***

A steep and scrambly descent off of Winshields Crags brought Rey to Caw Gap, and the terrain grew mercifully level for a time. She forged ahead across moorland and farmland, her pace interrupted by more ladder stiles at regular intervals. Despite the rain, she crossed paths with many more walkers today than on any of the preceding days of her walk. She did a quick mental calculation and realized that today was Saturday, which probably explained it. In rainy Britain, people rarely canceled weekend plans on account of the weather.

She shadowed another long section of intact Roman wall to reach Cawfields Quarry. The main feature of the quarry was its lagoon, which probably would have been picturesque on a sunny day but was today just a rather large wet spot in a similarly wet landscape. Rey trudged past it, although she observed other walkers to stopping to avail themselves of the public water tap and toilet situated there.

After passing the quarry, Rey’s next landmark was Aesica Fort. Unlike the much more impressive Housesteads the previous day, Aesica was largely stone rubble overgrown with grass. But its accessibility from the sizable town of Haltwhistle, less than two miles away to the south, meant that had several visitors tramping around on this spring Saturday. The morning’s steady rain had abated into a fine drizzle by this time, and Rey took advantage of the relative break in the weather to pause briefly and look at the ruins while stretching her tired shoulders. She also took the opportunity to dig a protein bar and some dried fruit out of her backpack. The final significant stretch of the Whin Sill lay before her, so a quick calorie-boost was in order.

Suitably fueled, Rey hiked due west from Aesica and soon began ascending up Walltown Crags. Walltown was less steep than Winshields had been, but it had the added challenge of being pathless. Hundreds of boots and some judiciously-placed routemarkers had created a thready but clear path to follow over the preceding crags, but over Walltown Crags it was every hiker for themselves. Rey was careful to keep the crag edge on her right side and the downward slope on her left as she picked her way ahead, passing high above the hamlet of Allolee and a small spring rather fancifully named King Arthur’s Well. 

Rey paused at the top of a rise to stuff some more dried fruit in her mouth. She’d be descending from her current point down into a small ravine, crossing the ladder stile she could see traversing the stone wall at the bottom, and then immediately ascending again to cross the final mile of the Whin Sill. She felt an unexpected pang at leaving this section of the trail behind. She’d expected from the beginning to love this middle section of Hadrian’s Wall, and she had. The steep climbs over the crags had been challenging, but they’d also been _fun_. 

And she’d spent part of a day and most of a night on them with Ben.

She’d be sorry to leave them.

She shook herself a little and continued walking again. Silly. There were still two full days of walking to be done after this day. Hadrian’s Wall was nowhere near done with her yet.

***

Rey descended and then climbed again, and navigated her way across the final bit of Walltown Crags, using yet another stretch of intact Roman wall as a navigation aid. The drizzle had lightened further, into a fine mist, and Rey gazed around her as she trudged along. The mist over the green hills behind her, with the moors stretching away to the north and south, painted an evocative picture, and she let her imagination run free again. She was the wife of some Roman centurion who’d followed her husband to his posting at the edge of the world. She was a medieval peasant, using the wall which had been at the top of the ridge since time out of mind to travel between villages.

The wall made ninety-degree turn downhill and she followed it, careful to plant her trekking poles and not lose her footing on the rain-slick grass. A gravel trail met her at the bottom of the hill, and she followed it. When she’d gone a short distance, she turned around for a last look and photo of the Whin Sill, looking like an ocean wave transformed into rock and grass just before breaking over the moors below. _“Maybe that’s exactly what happened,”_ she thought fancifully. _“Maybe this was all ocean once and a sorceror came and transformed it into earth and stone…”_

A gaggle of children broke the spell by racing past her, heading uphill to where she’d just come from, their adult minders power-walking to keep up. Walltown Recreation Site must have been close, then. Rey continued on the gravel path and sure enough, within minutes she was walking through the parking lot serving both the recreation site and the Roman Army Museum. 

Rey decided it was past time for a lunch stop, and walked into the small shop adjacent to the parking area. It sold all manner of sandwiches and beverages as well as ice cream, and Rey decided to stock up, buying a sandwich for today’s lunch as well as two more which would keep until the following day, along with a candy bar and a bag of crisps. The cashier was a jovial older woman who seemed inclined to talk, so as she rang her up, Rey couldn’t help asking, “Has my friend come through here, by chance? Tall, black hair, American accent?” 

“Aye, he has,” the cashier replied affably, handing Rey back her change. “An hour since, maybe a bit more.” 

Rey quickly did some mental math. She reckoned that Ben had had a two- or three-hour head start on her this morning, so if he was only an hour ahead of her now, she’d likely catch him before they reached Lanercost. The cashier didn’t miss the smile that graced Rey’s face at this realization. “Your friend, is he?” she asked with a wink. Rey smiled and ducked her head as she gathered her purchased food and headed outside to the covered picnic area adjacent to the shop.

Rey took her time eating her food and stretching her muscles, used the shop’s toilet, and then hit the trail again. After leaving Walltown Recreation Site, she crossed a road, a small field, and a ladder stile, and then descended a prodigious grassy hill down to Thirlwall Castle. Little remained of it – just the battered and partly-dismantled walls of the keep – but it still made a fetching picture, situated at the base of the hill with a burn burbling nearby. Rey was truly off of the Whin Sill now, and the pang she’d felt earlier at leaving this part of the trail struck her again.

She crossed a small footbridge over the burn and edged around an isolated house to reach a set of railway tracks. A posted sign instructed her to “Stop, Look, and Listen” for approaching trains, and after doing so, Rey scampered across the railway line and through a gate into a small wooded area.

The gate marked a significant crossroads. A side trail led south to Greenhead, which many eastbound Hadrian’s Wall walkers used as an overnight stop in order to have fresh legs to start the crags the following morning. The Hadrian’s Wall trail itself turned northwest to follow a road for a short distance before turning due west to travel across open country toward the town of Gilsland. But most significant of all, this was where Hadrian’s Wall and the Pennine Way, companions since Housesteads Fort, diverged again, with the Pennine Way going west and then south en route to its southern terminus in the Derbyshire Peak District.

Rey felt tears prick her eyes. Thinking about the Pennine Way inevitably made her think of her grandfather. But now, seeing the physical point where this tangible reminder of him would be leaving her, she felt his loss _acutely_. More acutely than she had since his funeral.

Rey tried to blink away the tears, but they wouldn’t be quelled. She tried to draw a calming breath, but it ended up being a ragged sob. And then she was crying. Truly crying, almost doubled over from the force of her sobs, at a crossroads north of Greenhead.

***

In time, Rey’s stormy bout of tears calmed somewhat and she was able to continue on, but not before pressing a kiss to her hand and then to the wooden waymarker indicating the split in the two trails.

She felt wrung out and tired from her weeping fit, but soldiered on gamely, turning left off the road to follow more waymarkers and a long series of ladder stiles cross-country to Gilsland. The drizzle was beginning to fall more heavily again, and Rey grimly reached up to secure the hood of her raincoat over her head once more. The distance to Gilsland hadn’t looked far on the map, but all the ladder stiles slowed her progress and it took her the better part of an hour to get there.

When Rey finally reached Gilsland, she decided not to stop, striding on through the drizzle to pass through the town and over the county border between Northumberland and Cumbria. She did allow herself a small smile at that. Hadrian’s Wall spanned three counties, with Cumbria being the westernmost one. She was officially starting to get near the end of the trip. That thought paradoxically both made her smile and prompted more tears, but Rey impatiently dashed them away.

She hadn’t seen any Roman ruins since leaving Walltown, but at the western edge of Gilsland the Roman wall abruptly reappeared, heralded by the ruins of a milecastle. A wire fence ran parallel to the wall, demarcating a separation between the trail and the adjacent sheep pasture, and Rey strolled on. The terrain had been relatively flat since Thirlwall Castle, but the hills weren’t quite all the way finished with her yet, and she followed the wall and fence up a modest one now. She paused at the top to take in the view of the River Irthing, the town of Gilsland behind her, the Cumbrian moors all around…and a familiar figure on the trail ahead, down below her.

Rey’s first impulse was to call out to him, and she had her hands half-raised to cup around her mouth before thinking better of it. Ben was probably too far away to hear her. So she took the next-best option and began to scurry down the hill.

Apparently she put too much enthusiasm into her scurrying, and she let out a surprised shriek as her feet slipped on the wet grass and she sat down hard on her bottom.

Rey would normally have taken this sort of thing in stride – undignified moments on slippery hillsides happened and there was no lasting harm done to her or her clothes, thanks to her waterproofs – but the bone-jarring thud of her fall, augmented by the weight of her backpack, was evidently enough to bring all the raw emotions of the last couple of hours to the fore again. And so, rather than getting back to her feet, Rey continued to sit where she’d gone down and allowed herself the luxury of a Grade A pity-party.

Which was how Ben found her.

Evidently he’d been within shouting (or at least shrieking) distance after all.

“Rey! Rey, are you okay?!” Ben looked frantic as he dashed up the slope toward her.

She offered a watery “Yeah,” trying and failing to wipe her tears away before he reached her.

Ben flung off his backpack and fell to his knees in front of her, reaching out tentative hands to feel for broken bones. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m just-“ Rey’s voice broke. “Just missing my granddad.” Rey could barely get the words out as her voice rose in pitch through her tears.

“Oh Rey, love…” Ben extricated Rey from her backpack straps in a businesslike way and then gathered her into his arms, cradling her head against his chest and rocking her gently as she gave in to the full force of her sobs. Rey clenched her hands against the front of Ben’s raincoat and pressed her face against his sternum as she cried.

After a few minutes she calmed enough to hiccup out a disjointed explanation for her tears, her face still buried against Ben’s chest. “The Pennine Way…did it with my granddad as a kid…seeing it split off from the trail…it felt like losing him all over again.” Fresh tears welled, and Ben made soothing noises as he continued to rock her. After a few minutes he pulled back and began to run his thumbs underneath her eyes, drying her tears. He sighed.

“I’m sorry, _mo chridhe_. If I’d known this was going to be a hard day for you I would have waited, walked with you, so you wouldn’t have been alone for it.” Ben dropped his hands from her face and took one of her hands in one of his, running his thumb over it soothingly.

Rey shook her head. “You couldn’t have known. _I_ didn’t even know it was going to hit me that hard. It just came out of nowhere when I saw that sign…” She sniffled. “He passed away in January.”

“And he meant a lot to you.” It wasn’t a question.

Rey nodded and answered it anyway, sniffling again. “Yes. He raised me, from the time I was nine. My parents…” the hand not holding Ben’s flailed, trying hopelessly to encompass the entirety of _that_ grim story, “…are not in the picture. They’re living, but they’ve never really been around. For me. Not the way my granddad was.”

Ben nodded, as if that garbled statement made perfect sense. He didn’t comment or press for clarification, merely continuing to rub his thumb over her hand as Rey gathered the remnants of her composure. 

After a few moments, he let go of her hand and stood, and then reached down to grip Rey’s elbows and help her up. “Up you get, _mo_ _chridhe_. There’s a café up ahead at Birdoswald. We’ll get you a cup of tea there.”

Rey laughed tremulously at the revelation that, not only had Ben picked up the speech patterns of his adopted country, he’d also adopted the very British certainty that a nice cup of tea could solve any problem. She brushed wet grass off the seat of her trousers as Ben fetched her trekking poles from where they’d fallen, and then allowed him to help her get her backpack back on. Then he retrieved his own from where it had landed against the Roman wall, and they started down the hill together.

Ben bumped Rey’s shoulder with his after they’d taken a few steps. She looked up at him questioningly.

“You’re not alone.”

Rey held his gaze, and transferred both of her trekking poles to one hand so that she could use the other to grasp his. “Neither are you.”

***

The drizzle finally stopped as they reached Willowford Bridge, and they took advantage of this fact to linger for several minutes. The River Irthing had shifted its course in the two thousand years since the original Roman bridge was built, which meant that its scant remains were now a bridge to nowhere. A much more modern metal footbridge crossed the river in a spot that was exceedingly picturesque, even under an overcast sky.

“This would be a lovely picnic spot on a nice day,” Rey mused as she took photos with her phone, eyeing the clump of trees which shadowed the gravel riverbank.

Ben hummed his agreement, seeming content to watch Rey as she looked her fill at the river. Rey caught him looking and smiled, sauntering over to him where he leaned against the bridge railing. 

“Lean down.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to kiss you. I haven’t since this morning.”

“You make a compelling argument.” Ben obligingly leaned his head down, and Rey pecked him softly on the lips. Her returned her kiss with a soft press of his own.

They moved on, toiling up the trail as it switchbacked up a steep escarpment. When they reached the top they were practically on the doorstep of Birdoswald Fort, the westernmost fort open to the public on Hadrian’s Wall.

It being a Saturday afternoon, several families with children were ambling around the fort and the attached visitors’ center, but Ben and Rey were able to thread their way into the café without too much trouble. A flash of Ben’s English Heritage Member card bought them two discounted cups of tea – mint for Ben and Earl Grey for Rey – as well as two muffins to share, and they found an empty table near a window to sit and enjoy it all.

They sat in easy quiet for a while, enjoying the tea and the view out the window, as the families around them chattered and fussed. Eventually Ben asked Rey, “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes, I am.” Rey’s next instinct was to apologize for making Ben an audience to her breakdown on the hillside, but something forestalled her. The way Ben had held her as she cried, and listened as she talked about her childhood, without judgment or comment, just openness and support and a steadying hand on her own…apologizing for that felt wrong. Instead she reached out a hand again and laced her fingers through his across the table. “I’m glad you’re here.” It was a simple truth, and it felt right to say.

Ben squeezed her fingers. “Me too.”

***

They explored Birdoswald Fort together, Ben playing tour guide for Rey, pointing out the features of the fort that made it special.

“It commands an isolated piece of high ground, here. Anyone approaching from the south would have had to cross the river and scale the wall of the gorge, like we just did. To the east, it’s within sight of the Whin Sill, where we’ve just come from.” Ben gestured in that direction, where Rey could indeed see the hulking dolerite of the crags they’d spent the last day and a half traversing. “It could signal other forts along the ridge, there. And seven miles away to the north,” he pivoted ninety degree to the left, encompassing that direction, “is Bewcastle, also within signaling distance of this spot. On a clear day you can see Scotland from here.”

They continued to wander the ruins. “This fort was in active use for two or three hundred years, until the Romans withdrew from Britain in the fifth century. By that time a civilian community had grown up around it, and there’s archaeological evidence that the local population continued to use Birdoswald for their own purposes long after the end of Roman occupation.”

“Smart,” Rey mused. “Who’d want to leave such a well-defended place?”

Ben agreed. “The more I learn about Dark Age Britain, the more fascinated I am by it. It’s been a historical trend to pretend like nothing noteworthy happened in Britain between the end of the Roman occupation and the arrival of the Saxons and Danes, or even the Normans. And it’s simply not true.”

Once they had looked their fill around Birdoswald, they gathered their things and prepared for the final push to Lanercost. “Remind me how far?” Ben asked Rey as he buckled his hip strap and chest strap. 

“About four miles,” Rey replied as she adjusted her own straps. “Level for a while and then some more hills, right before we get there.”

“Right, then. Onward!”

***

The trail went through pasture alongside the road for most of the rest of the day, occasionally detouring around fields where lambing was still taking place but otherwise following a more-or-less straight line along the course of the Wall. They’d left the last intact stretch of Roman wall behind a short while after leaving Birdoswald, but there were still occasional odds and ends of turret remains to see.

Near the hamlet of Banks the trail left grassy pasture and got onto tarmac road, and both Rey and Ben grimaced. The unyielding, unforgiving hard surface was painful after a full day of walking, and both of their gaits altered to what could only be called a “mince” until the trail thankfully brought them back onto grass.

What Rey had taken for a pile of rubble on the grass turned out to be another wall fragment, the tallest remaining part of Hadrian’s Wall, according to the English Heritage plaque which named the site as “Hare Hill.”

Whoever had so named it must have been either painfully oblivious or had a wicked sense of humor, Rey thought. Because another, realer, and much larger hill loomed above them, and Rey couldn’t help but groan at the sight of it.

Craggle Hill was infamous in hiker lore. It marked the “last gasp” of the Pennine Hills before they flattened out en route to the coast, and it seemed to go upward for ages (although her map helpfully informed her that it was “only” about 436 feet in height).

“Well,” she sighed, “it’s not going to climb itself.”

“Think of it this way,” Ben offered, although he was also looking up at the hill with an expression of bleakness which Rey suspected matched her own. “Once we get over this hill, we’re practically done for the day.”

They both sighed and started up it, Rey using her poles to maintain momentum and Ben dropping into a hillwalker’s lope. By unspoken agreement they didn’t speak and didn’t stop until they reached the top. Rey didn’t even deviate her gaze from the ground below and immediately ahead of her, literally keeping her head down until the climb was done.

When she reached the top, she couldn’t help staring around and breathing out a soft “Wow.” Lanercost Priory, the main attraction of the village that was their destination for the day, was visible below them to the south. Her view to the north was obscured by trees, but to the west she could see where the trail continued on through the Cumbrian countryside, en route to Carlisle, which they’d reach tomorrow. The sky remained stubbornly grey and overcast up above, but it actually seemed to deepen the greens, browns, and blues of the landscape, until Rey felt like she was looking at a painting.

Ben gently bumped her shoulder with his, like he’d done earlier, and Rey smiled up at him. She stood on her toes to gently kiss his jaw before they turned and walked westward over the plateau of the hill, sloping gently downward.

Their reward for traversing Craggle Hill was the famous Haytongate Honesty Hut. Various members of the communities along the length of Hadrian’s Wall maintained “honesty boxes” for the hikers and explorers passing through, although they were more numerous west of the Whin Sill than east of it. They could be as simple as coolers filled with drinks and snacks left in a sheltered spot, with an accompanying lockbox for donations. Some were roadside hutches with an electrical supply run from a nearby house to power a kettle. But the Haytongate Honesty Hut was without peer. It was an enclosed wooden hut sitting right alongside the trail, and not only did it have an array of hot and cold drinks, crisps, candy, and homemade pastries on offer, it also sold kitschy Hadrian’s Wall merchandise. But it was perhaps most famous for the various handwritten notes its patrons left behind, which covered the walls and windows of the hut. Rey and Ben paused to write and post notes of their own, and Rey took the opportunity to snag a Snickers bar, dropping 50p into the donation jar.

Reaching Haytongate meant they were officially done with the Hadrian’s Wall trail for the day, but now they had to make their way to Lanercost. They easily found the side-trail which led south, between two wooded areas and down off the ridge of Craggle Hill to the valley floor of their companion from earlier, the River Irthing.

Lanercost was a small place – really just a cluster of houses by the riverbank, down the lane from the priory – and they found their B&B with ease. The proprietor was a straitlaced woman of perhaps sixty, whose greeting was courteous but not overly warm. She dealt with Ben first.

“Tent pitches are in the back garden. There’s only one other tent booked tonight and they’re already checked in, so you can pitch up wherever you please. You’re welcome to use the ground-floor toilet and shower.” She indicated a door near the stairwell, with a black and white “Shower and W.C.” sign affixed to it.

Then she moved on to Rey, handing her a room key. “Your room is upstairs, third door along. The ‘Lily Room.’ You’ve both booked in for dinner and breakfast, yes?” she asked, including them both in her speech again. “Dinner will be served promptly at half past six.”

She seemed to be finished talking, but kept looking at them both with a keen eye, as if she wanted to make sure they departed the reception area in opposite directions. _“No untoward assignations or other funny business allowed in this B &B, I suppose,”_ Rey thought to herself, as she started up the stairs. Halfway up she caught Ben’s eye as he began shuffling down the hallway to the door leading to the back garden, and he threw her a mischievous wink.

***

The ensuite attached to Rey’s room was equipped with a large bathtub, and Rey made full use of it, relaxing her stiff muscles with a long, hot soak. Recalling that dinner would likely be a somewhat formal affair, she took the time to dry her hair with the room’s provided dryer, and donned the same jeans and violet and top she’d worn to dinner with Ben two nights previously, along with some mascara. (If she also took the time to shave her legs before dressing, well, that was no one’s business but hers.)

At 6:15 she descended the stairs and found Ben seated on an overstuffed sofa in the lounge, writing in a journal. He was in his black hoodie again, along with a pair of jeans and bright red socks, his black hair slightly damp and curling from his own shower. He’d also shaved, she noticed, and she giggled to see that his jawline was just the slightest bit paler than the rest of his face from their hours in the sun the previous day.

Ben looked up at the sound of her giggle and smiled, patting the sofa cushion next to him. Rey quickly darted a glance around to make sure the disapproving proprietor was nowhere near before she joined Ben on the couch, tucking her feet up and snuggling into his side. Ben kissed her forehead and then went back to his journaling. He had nice handwriting, and he was writing with a ridiculously nice pen – the kind Rey imagined CEOs of Fortune 500 companies must use.

“I think the landlady thinks we’re up to no good,” she murmured to him conspiratorially. 

“She definitely thinks so,” he murmured back. “I caught her ring-checking me.” He waggled the fingers of his left hand in illustration. “A young man and a young woman arriving together with separate bookings – what will the neighbors think?”

At that moment the volume rose from the direction of the B&B’s dining area as two people – the inhabitants of the second tent, Rey supposed – let themselves in and began to squabble about where to sit.

“I suppose that’s dinner, then.” Ben closed his journal and tucked it into the small daypack at his feet, which Rey saw also contained a book and some toiletries.

They made their way into the dining area and met their companions for the evening meal: a married couple of a similar age to Ben who introduced themselves by the improbable names of Armitage and Phasma. Phasma was a statuesque blonde who stood nearly as tall as Ben, and Armitage was a redhead with a permanent pinched look on his face, as if he’d smelled something foul but was politely trying to pretend that he hadn’t. They both spoke with achingly posh accents and explained that they were in the north of England for a weekend away from London. 

While Rey’s initial assessment of Armitage as a bit of a prig seemed to be correct, she quickly took a liking to Phasma. Phasma was wickedly funny and an excellent conversationalist, and she effortlessly kept the dinner-talk flowing as the four of them worked their way through a thoroughly English three-course meal of salad, bangers and mash, and sticky toffee pudding for dessert. She was also able to charm the landlady into some genuine smiles and even one surprised laugh as she bustled in and out of the dining room, clearing their plates and making sure the water pitcher remained full.

After dinner was finished, Phasma suggested they adjourn to the lounge. Rey found a deck of cards among all the board games stored on the lounge’s bookshelf, and the four of them settled around the coffee table for several high-spirited rounds of Spades.

“Where are the two of you off to tomorrow?” Rey asked as Ben dealt their next hand. 

“Windermere, and then back to London in the late evening,” Armitage replied.

“What about the two of you?” Phasma asked as she swirled a glass of white wine purloined from the B&B’s kitchen.

“Carlisle tomorrow, and then Bowness-on-Solway the day after that.”

“And where is home when the two of you aren’t out tramping across England?”

“Durham for me.”

“Glasgow,” Ben replied.

“Ah! Armitage and I did the long-distance thing when we were first dating, didn’t we darling?” Phasma playfully ruffled Armitage’s red hair.

Rey flushed, but couldn’t help the smile that pulled at a corner of her mouth.

“We just met earlier this week, in Newcastle,” Ben said quietly.

Rey quickly looked over at Ben, worried he’d be embarrassed or chagrined that Phasma had assumed they were in a relationship. It had certainly felt to Rey like they were heading rapidly in that direction…but they hadn’t discussed it. They hadn’t discussed _anything_ about their future after finishing Hadrian’s Wall, two days from now. But Ben held her gaze steadily, cheeks slightly pink, with something that looked like _hope_ shining in his soulful brown eyes.

Phasma gleefully clapped her hands together. “Oh, a hiker’s courtship, how marvelous!”

Rey gathered her courage and replied, still holding Ben’s gaze. “Yes, it is.”

Ben responded with one of his rare full-out smiles. “Aye, it is.”

Armitage made a gagging noise, Phasma playfully boxed him on the head with a tart comment about “Making light of young love,” and the Spades game was forgotten.

***

A few minutes later, Rey became aware of a noise in the background, which had started quietly some time ago but was rapidly becoming louder.

It was raining again. Heavily.

Armitage seemed to perceive the noise at the exact same time Rey did, because he abruptly leapt up from his seat by the coffee table and went to the window of the lounge, peering out into the night. “Oh, bollocks.”

Ben followed him to the window to see for himself, and his shoulders sagged as he echoed Armitage’s sentiments.

Phasma said brightly, “Well darling, I suppose it’s time to find out if the tent is as waterproof as the clerk at Cotswold said it would be. Goodnight, Rey. Do try not to arouse the proprietress’s ire.” She threw Rey and Ben a wink as she caught her husband by the arm and hustled him down the hall and out the backdoor.

It took Rey a moment to realize what Phasma had been implying, and she caught her breath a little. She looked around furtively, but of course there was no sign of their hostess in the lounge. Rey actually hadn’t seen her since she’d cleared their dessert plates away and bade them all a good night.

She smiled rather wickedly to herself. If she was in the mood to live up to the landlady’s lowest expectations, here was her chance.

Ben was still staring morosely out the window, seeming not to have heard Phasma’s parting shot. A crack of thunder rumbled through the atmosphere, and his shoulders slumped even further.

“You can wait out the rain in my room, if you want,” Rey murmured to him quietly.

Ben looked at her sharply, eyes and pupils wide, seeming to take her meaning at once. “Are you sure, Rey?”

Rey knew instinctively, from the way he asked it, that this was an important question and that he needed an unequivocal answer before things proceeded further.

“I’m sure, Ben. Yes. Let’s go upstairs.”

*******

Once he had his answer, Ben didn’t need to be told twice.

He seized Rey’s hand and his half-forgotten daypack and hustled them out of the lounge and across the hall to the stairs leading to the bedrooms. Rey quickly led the way up the stairs and along the hall to the “Lily Room,” fumbling with the skeleton key in her haste.

She finally got the door open and pulled Ben inside, hastily turning on the bedside lamp and locking the door securely behind them. Ben was on her a split-second after the lock clicked home, arms around her waist and tongue in her mouth. Rey moaned and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, tangling her fingers in his thick black hair. 

Ben tightened his arms around her and Rey took the cue, jumping up to wrap her legs around his waist. God, he was WIDE. She couldn’t help the breathy whimper that escaped her as he moved a hand down to support her rear, squeezing a little. Rey responded by rolling her hips against him once, which earned her a low groan from him.

Kissing her deeply all the while, Ben slowly walked them over to the double bed and laid Rey down, cradling her head with one hand until it settled on the pillows. He knelt upright between her legs and divested himself of his black hoodie, tossing it unheeded onto the floor somewhere behind him. Then he took a long moment to look down at Rey. She thought that if she looked half as debauched as he did already, then he must surely be enjoying the view. She was certainly enjoying hers – the tight white T-shirt he wore did little to hide how muscled his arms and chest were. His lips were already red and kiss-swollen, and his hair was in disarray from her fingers and his lack of care pulling off his jumper.

After a long moment he lay down on top of her, supporting his weight on his forearms as he resumed kissing her. Their tongues twined together and Rey moaned, running her hands up Ben’s arms, across his shoulders, and down his back.

When she snuck a hand under the hem of his shirt to lightly run her fingernails over his bare skin, Ben let out an exclamatory sound and thrust his hips against hers. He tore his mouth away from Rey’s and kissed a broad line along her jaw to her ear.

“Rey,” he breathed heavily into her ear. “Rey.”

“Mmm, Ben,” she responded, running her fingernails over the skin of his lower back again, to see if she could make him thrust his hips again. To her delight, she discovered she _could_.

 _“Rey.”_ With some effort, Ben finally seemed to recover his speech capabilities. “Rey, can I go down on you?”

What Rey _wanted_ to say was, “You can do anything you like to me right now, Ben Solo,” but considering the way he was kissing and nibbling the skin just under her ear at that moment, she was quite proud of herself to just get out the words “Hnnghhh, Ben, _yes_.”

Ben knelt upright again to shed his T-shirt, and Rey simultaneously set to work on the closure of her jeans and then began to wriggle out of them. Ben helped her pull them free of her legs, and Rey sat up to run admiring hands over his abdomen and chest. He was just as muscular as she had suspected, and Ben obligingly stayed still as she looked and touched her fill. 

One of her hands strayed down to the front of his jeans, just barely grazing over the hardness there. Ben caught her hand in his and brought it to his mouth, pressing a kiss into the well of her palm. “You first, _mo leannan_.” He kissed her lips again, encouraging her to lay back again. Rey resisted him for a moment, parting from him to pull her blouse over her head and toss it aside, leaving her in only her bra and underwear. Then she lay back, pulling him with her into another kiss.

Ben kissed her tenderly, and then murmured against her lips: “Tell me to stop anytime, and we’ll stop.” Rey nodded her understanding, carding her fingers through his hair again. Ben pressed one last kiss to her lips and then began making his leisurely way down her body, kissing her neck, her sternum, the tops of her breasts, and her stomach.

“What does _mo leannan_ mean?” she asked breathlessly as he peppered kisses around and below her navel, hooking his fingers into the waistband of her underwear as he did so.

“It means ‘sweetheart,’” he answered, holding her eyes as he pulled her underwear down her legs. Rey kicked it off and spread her thighs in the same motion, and Ben settled between them.

If Rey thought Ben’s waist was broad, his shoulders were even broader. She panted and whined a little as he arranged her to his liking, pressing her thighs almost down to the mattress so that she was completely open to his gaze. She gripped the pillow under her head with one hand and his forearm, which was currently spanning and anchoring her hips, with the other, already anticipating the ride of her life.

“You’re amazing, Rey,” Ben said with sudden gravity. She looked down her body to meet his gaze, hazy and heavy-lidded. “And brave.” He pressed an open-mouthed kiss to her mons. “And beautiful.” Another, lower down. “And I’m going to make you come now.”

He was as good as his word.

Rey had had other sex partners perform this act on her before, usually in a perfunctory and somewhat impatient way. As a politely-tolerated prelude to the main act.

Ben ate her out like it was his fucking _job_. Like there was absolutely nothing else on earth that he would rather be doing.

He took his cues from the pitch and volume of the noises she made, and from what she showed him when she briefly let go of his forearm to demonstrate the pressure and rhythm she liked. He was a quick study, and in no time at all she was back to gripping his arm and keening as he perfectly replicated her motions with his mouth.

Two fingers of his other hand gently pressed inside her – not pistoning madly in and out, but just holding space and gently but firmly stroking with the barest movements of his fingertips.

“ _Yes Ben, like that_!” Rey cried out. His mouth and fingers felt unbelievable, and she _needed_ to thrust her hips, to tighten her legs, to move against him. But he had her lower body so securely pinned with his shoulders and arms that all she could do was thrash her head against the pillow.

“ _Aaahhh, Ben I’m gonna_ -“ Rey couldn’t even complete the sentence before she was wailing out her orgasm, her upper body curving reflexively off the bed with the force of it.

Ben gentled his ministrations but didn’t stop, helping her ride out the waves of her climax. Only when Rey had subsided bonelessly back onto the bed did he disentangle himself from between her thighs and kiss his way back up her body. Rey languidly returned his kiss, smiling against his lips, tasting herself on him. A possessive little thrill ran through her at the thought that he tasted and smelled like her now.

Ben gently coaxed her onto her side, facing him, and smoothed his hands up and down her body as she continued to bask in the afterglow. He ran his fingers under her bra straps, soothing the skin there, but made no move to move them off her shoulders.

Rey ran a hand over the muscles of his chest and abdomen again, lingering here and there over areas that particularly pleased her. Her hand eventually reached the waistband of his jeans again, and she looked up at him questioningly, recalling how he had stopped her earlier.

“You don’t have to.”

“What if I want to?”

Ben swallowed and nodded. She kissed him and echoed his earlier words back to him. “Tell me to stop and we’ll stop.” He kissed her again, more deeply, and then unfastened his jeans for her. Rey dipped her hand into his boxer-briefs and drew him out.

He was proportional. Rey had suspected he would be, from the way he’d felt when she’d touched him through his jeans. She could only just get her hand all the way around him, and she shivered a little, anticipating what he’d feel like between her legs. 

“Show me what you like,” she whispered to him. Ben obediently wrapped his hand around hers and showed her the grip and rhythm he preferred. Once Rey had learned it he rested his hand heavily on her hip and panted against her forehead.

“Ohhhh, Rey, I’m not gonna last,” he groaned.

“Then don’t,” she replied. “Let go.”

Ben’s groans grew gradually louder, and then the hand on her hip darted frantically to her jaw to tilt her head up for a passionate kiss as he came.

*******

Another thrill of possessiveness and satisfaction washed over Rey. She’d made this giant of a man, this intelligent, brave, understanding, gentle, and tall man, this expat who unreservedly and unashamedly _loved_ his adopted country, who kept handwritten journals and camped and studied history and archaeology and was the single best person at cunnilingus she had ever met, come apart under her hands.

At that thought, she couldn’t help but giggle and throw her arms around him in a squeezing hug, heedless of the mess on her hands and his abdomen. Ben returned the hug in a more languid fashion, still enfolded in his own post-orgasmic haze.

After a minute, Rey murmured a “Be right back” into Ben’s ear, rose from the bed, and padded to the ensuite bathroom. She quickly used the toilet and washed her hands, and then wetted a washcloth. She returned to the bed and ran the washcloth over Ben’s abdomen, cleaning him up. 

“I think this is supposed to be the other way around,” he drawled. But he was smiling. Once Rey had finished her ministrations he rose to perform his own ablutions in the bathroom, and Rey took the opportunity to ready herself for bed. She found a pair of clean underwear in her backpack and slipped them on, along with a relatively clean pair of leggings. She divested herself of her bra and slipped on a loose-fitting T-shirt.

She was twining her hair up into its nighttime bun when Ben emerged from the ensuite and walked to the window. He looked out into the dark night and sighed. “It’s still raining.” As if on cue, another rumble of thunder pealed outside.

“Well then,” Rey smiled. “I suppose you’ve no choice but to stay a little longer, haven’t you?”

Ben smiled back. “I suppose not.” He walked to the wall nearest the door, where he’d hurriedly dropped his daypack on their way in. “Luckily I came prepared,” he said, hefting it. Rey giggled as he returned to the ensuite, toiletry-laden daypack in hand. A moment later she heard the sounds of him brushing his teeth.

When he had finished and emerged, Rey took his place in the bathroom to brush her own teeth and wash her face. By the time she came back into the bedroom, Ben had shed his jeans, put his T-shirt back on, and was sitting up in bed, idly flipping through a magazine that had been left on the night-table. It all felt quite domestic, really. Rey felt a contented and comforting warmth at the thought.

 _“We could pass years like this.”_ The thought came unbidden, and Rey allowed herself to sit with it for a moment before filing it away to reexamine later.

She climbed into bed and Ben put the magazine to one side. “Ready for lights out?” he asked her.

“Mm-hm,” she replied. And she was. It had been a very long day on many counts, and now that she’d fully come down from their interlude Rey found that she was very tired indeed.

Ben turned out the light and they took a few minutes to settle in for sleep. Unlike the previous night in the sleeping bag they had some room to maneuver, and they both ended up on their sides with Rey’s front to Ben’s back. “My jetpack,” he murmured sleepily, reaching for the arm she’d flung over his side to pull it more tightly around him.

“My Ben,” she murmured back, too sleepy to think of anything more creative to say. It seemed to be the right thing though, because Ben sighed contentedly, and within minutes his breathing had deepened and evened out as sleep took him. Rey followed only minutes after that.

***

Below them in the B&B’s back garden, Phasma enjoyed a clandestine cigarette during her own post-coital glow as the rain continued to drum on the tent overhead and her husband snored alongside her. She gave a little salute as the light from the single occupied upstairs bedroom finally went out for the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout-out to JuliaAurelia for coining the phrase "hiker's courtship!"
> 
> Rey's grieving scene is brought to you by the song ["Full Circle" by Loreena McKennitt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwWdDGtH8b4).
> 
> I have made some very minor edits to chapters 3 and 4, to fix a couple of small continuity errors I found on re-read. They are literally a couple words apiece and do not significantly affect the plot, but it was going to bug me if I didn't fix them so I fixed them. :P
> 
> I am anticipating that updates will be fortnightly from here on out, especially if the rest of the chapters end up being as long as this one. *sweatdrop* I am happy to report that my exams this week mostly went swimmingly, so I thank you all for your well-wishes on that front!


	6. Day 6: Lanercost to Carlisle, 13 miles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More M-rated stuff in this chapter, so once again, mind the updated tags! As before, if you prefer not to read sex scenes, skip the section demarcated with long lines of asterisks (*******).

Breakfast the next morning was a lively affair.

Ben had crept out of Rey’s room and returned to his tent just before dawn, an event which had not gone unmarked by Phasma and Armitage.

The black hoodie jumper Ben had been wearing the previous evening now enveloped Rey’s much slighter form, a fact which did not go unmarked by their hostess.

And so it was that breakfast passed in a mixture of good-natured but unrelenting teasing from Phasma, mute indifference from Armitage, and open scowling from the landlady.

Rey answered Phasma’s teasing with banter of her own, and the landlady’s frowns with bright smiles. It was another sunny day outside, she’d passed a _very_ cozy night with Ben, and nothing was going to bring her down today.

Ben largely kept his gaze on his plate as he worked his way through his full English breakfast, but he was smiling and he kept pressing Rey’s socked foot with his own under the table.

All things considered, Rey thought it best not to impose upon the landlady’s extremely tenuous goodwill any longer, and she made quick work of re-packing her backpack after breakfast. When she met Ben outside half an hour later, she was grateful for the impulse that had led her to appropriate his jumper as he’d gathered his things prior to his stealthy pre-dawn departure from her room. Last night’s storm had heralded a cold front, and the temperature had dropped significantly. Although the sun was shining among fluffy white clouds, Rey could see her breath when she exhaled.

She recalled her decision to leave her own thick jumper behind in Durham and smiled ruefully. She’d have to tell Jannah she’d been right about the weather, after all.

Still, she wouldn’t have missed the way Ben’s nostrils had flared and a muscle under his left eye had twitched when she’d come downstairs that morning for the world.

She walked up to him and he leaned down for a tender kiss. Rey transferred her poles to one hand so she could cup his cheek, fingertips straying into his hair.

“I want to go look at the priory,” she said when they separated.

“Let’s go then,” he replied.

The priory was only a few minutes’ walk down the village’s main road, and Rey gazed up at it in awe as the morning sun lit up the reddish-pink sandstone from which it was built. “I remember reading somewhere that stones from Hadrian’s Wall were used to build parts of it,” she mused. “The Wall really infuses everything in this part of the country, doesn’t it?”

“Seems so,” Ben answered thoughtfully.

Rey could see people beginning to bustle around the priory grounds, beginning their own days of work and worship. The priory was still a functioning church and today was Sunday, which meant the people who worked there would have a full day today. The sense of well-being Rey had woken with deepened, and stayed with her when she and Ben turned back down the lane to return to the trail.

***

To get back to Haytongate they had to climb the same side-trail they’d descended the previous day, and both Rey and Ben were coughing from cold-burnt windpipes by the time they reached the top. After pausing for a moment to drink some water and admire the view, they turned westward to officially begin the day’s walk.

Gently-undulating hills gave way to wide swathes of grassy pasture, complete with numerous sheep and lambs as well as the occasional herd of cattle. The day gradually warmed as the morning advanced, and without needing to concentrate on getting up and down steep crags, Rey had ample leisure to look around and admire the scenery. The grassy fields of Cumbria lacked the rugged, desolate beauty of the Whin Sill and the unique maritime character of Newcastle and its environs, but she was enjoying it immensely nevertheless. The earth and sky felt very near each other here, as if she could reach up and touch the clouds floating overhead. Or like the earth might spontaneously rise up to meet the sky, pressing her very gently between them like a weighted blanket. 

The much flatter landscape also meant that she and Ben were able to eat up the miles, and by lunchtime they’d already passed through the villages of Dovecote, Walton, Swainsteads, Cambeckhill, and Newtown, pausing only once or twice to get snacks from the honesty boxes they passed at regular intervals.

They stopped for lunch in a field just past Newtown, sitting on their raincoats since the ground was still slightly damp from the previous night’s rain. Rey dug out the sandwiches she’d bought at Walltown the day before, along with her finds from the honesty boxes, while Ben boiled water to rehydrate a dried meal. 

“I don’t think we’ve seen any Roman wall today,” Rey mused as they ate. 

Ben swallowed a mouthful of chicken and rice, gesturing to a depression in the earth nearby which was overgrown with early bluebells. “We’re not quite at the end of the wall ditch yet. But no, we won’t be seeing any more of the wall itself.”

Rey made a regretful noise. “I’m a little sad to see it go.”

Ben nodded. “Think of it this way, though - the wall disappearing means we’re getting close to the end.”

Rey smiled, recalling something Ben had told her earlier in the week. “That means you’re almost done with your first long-distance trail!”

Ben smiled widely in response, showing his teeth and dimples. “It does! I can see why people get hooked on this. The sense of accomplishment is heady. Even though I’m still a day and a half away from properly accomplishing it.”

_A day and a half left…_

That thought struck Rey quite suddenly. In a day and a half she and Ben would be finished hiking Hadrian’s Wall. And she didn’t know what would happen after that.

Oh, she knew what would happen to _her_. She had a ticket on the afternoon train from Carlisle back to Durham two days from now. She’d go back to the flat she shared with Rose and Jannah, back to her work at the university, back to planning her trip to Cornwall in September. 

Presumably Ben would be traveling back to Glasgow to resume his own day-to-day life.

But what would happen to _them_? Was there even a _them_ to discuss? The rational part of her brain said of course there was. Ben’s actions this week – eating with her, walking with her, sharing sleeping space with her, kissing her the way he did, looking at her the way he did, exploring her body the way he did – all said that he wanted their lives to remain entwined after this hike was over. Floating down the hill above Once Brewed the previous morning, after spending the night in his bedroll, that had been all the security she needed.

But now, so close to the end of the trip, Rey found that she needed to hear the words. The little girl who’d been passed from foster family, to foster family, to parents who sometimes wanted her and sometimes didn’t, and back to foster family again until her grandfather had broken the cycle, needed to hear the words. 

“Ben?”

“Mm?”

“What happens after tomorrow?” Rey tried to keep her voice neutral, but despite her best efforts it wavered slightly.

Ben swallowed the last bite of his food and turned his head to look at her for a long moment. “I want to see more of you. Keep seeing you.”

Rey’s heart rose and her breath came short. But Ben wasn’t done yet. He set his empty food pouch down on the grass nearby and turned fully to look at her. “I want you to come visit me in Glasgow. I want to show you the city, and the cathedral, and where I go to school. Take you to all the best restaurants. Show you Scotland. Take you Munro-bagging.”

He took her right hand in both of his and gently massaged the bases of her fingers, cramped from nearly six days wrapped around her trekking poles. “I want to come visit you in Durham. Have you show me all your favorite places. Taste your baking. I want you to send me pictures while you’re in Cornwall. I want to hear all about the South West Coast Path.” His voice took on a gravelly note. “I want to sleep in your bed again. I want you to sleep in mine.” One of his hands left hers for a moment, to finger the fabric of her jumper – _his_ jumper. “I want to keep wondering where all my hoodies have gone.” 

He paused then, seeming to nerve himself up. “And eventually, once I’m finished with this degree, I want us to live in the same city. Ideally the same flat.”

Rey’s heart had been filling to the point of bursting while he talked, her eyes simultaneously welling with happy tears. This last declaration – and the knowledge that Ben was already thinking of their long-term future in a way she’d only barely dared to – caused them to spill over a little. Still, that scared and uncertain voice in her head wasn’t ready to be silenced. “You can’t know that, Ben. You’ve only known me for six days.”

Ben’s gaze never wavered from Rey’s face. “Granted. But I do know this, Rey.” He dropped her right hand and took her left, massaging it in turn. “I know that you are the first person in a very long time who’s made me feel _seen_. And I want you in my life beyond tomorrow.” He leaned forward and gently pressed his forehead to hers. “I meant every word I said last night. I think you are amazing, and brave, and beautiful. I’ve known you for six days, but you’re already inside my heart, _mo chridhe_. I want to be around for you, as much as I can possibly be.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I think I’m falling in love with you, Rey.”

Rey made a sound that was half-laugh and half-sob. “I’m falling in love with you too, Ben. I think I have been since that first day in Newcastle.”

Ben surged forward and captured her lips in a searing kiss. Rey wound her arms around his neck as he bore her backward onto the ground, continuing to kiss her passionately.

Eventually their kisses gentled, but Rey didn’t let Ben sit up, keeping one arm around his neck while her other hand played with stray wisps of his hair. She tried to form words in her own mind. Ben had just bared his soul to her, without asking her to do the same; but she knew him well enough by now to intuit that he likely needed to hear words from her, too. But he was making it very difficult, by continuing to kiss every part of her face he could reach.

Rey unwound her arm from around Ben’s neck and placed a hand on his shoulder, indicating she wanted to sit up again. Ben duly helped her up with an arm around her lower back, and before she could overthink things, Rey began to speak.

“I can’t wait to visit you in Scotland, Ben. I’m so excited already!” A wide smile split Rey’s face, and Ben answered her with a small, slightly vulnerable smile of his own. Rey forged ahead. “I want…all those things. I want to see and do all those things with you. I want you to meet my flatmates. I want to make you smile. You have such a beautiful smile Ben, when you _really_ smile. You could launch rockets with it. I want to be…” Rey was going to say “Your girlfriend,” but somehow those words weren’t enough. So she course-corrected midsentence to “…yours.”

Ben answered. “You are.”

“I want you to be mine.”

“I am.”

Rey leaned her forehead against Ben’s again. “Alright then.”

They exchanged another slow, tender kiss, and rested in one another’s arms for a long moment before rising to stand. They gathered their rubbish from lunch and re-shouldered their backpacks before continuing through the field, hand-in-hand. Rey realized there was still one question about their immediate future that she wanted to ask Ben.

“Can we have sex when we get to Carlisle?”

Ben’s answer was an immediate and emphatic “Yes.”

***

The bucolic landscape took them along a more-or-less straight line past Carlisle’s small municipal airport and Bleatarn Farm. About a mile past Bleatarn the trail made an abrupt 90-degree turn to the left to take them onto a farm track, which led them along more fields, across a pedestrian bridge over the A689, and into the village of Crosby-on-Eden.

“We’re on the Stanegate now,” Ben said to Rey as they walked along the road through the village. “It was a Roman road linking Carlisle and Corbridge, built about 40 years before Hadrian’s Wall went up.”

“Roman infusion again,” Rey mused as they walked along. They were quite close to Carlisle now and the difficult parts of the day’s navigation were done, so Rey allowed her mind to wander again as she and Ben ambled through Crosby-on-Eden. _“We’re two third-century Britons, traveling on the Stanegate to complete some business in Carlisle,”_ she thought. _“We’re two Regency-era lovers on our way to elope in Scotland.”_ That one made her smile and quickly press her shoulder against Ben’s, a gesture that had become a sort of affectionate shorthand between them. Ben smiled down at her quizzically but didn’t ask what had prompted it.

A young couple pushing a pram came toward them, and Rey and Ben shuffled to one side of the footway to give them room. The woman had blonde braids coiled into buns on either side of her head, and the man was solidly-built with brown hair and a full beard. The brown-haired toddler they were pushing played contentedly with a juice box, and looked up at Rey and Ben with a coo as they passed by. _“Maybe…”_ Rey halted _that_ reverie before it could get _too_ fantastical, but didn’t squash it. Instead, she carefully filed it away for later – much later – examination.

_“Maybe.”_

Immediately after leaving Crosby-on-Eden they reached the river which gave the village its name. The River Eden would be their on-and-off companion for the remainder of the hike, and they followed it for a short distance before it looped away to the south. A farm track took them to the suburb of Linstock, where the river briefly joined them again.

While walking through Linstock, Rey became cognizant of a sound she hadn’t heard since leaving Newcastle: the persistent roar of distant traffic. The source of the sound became apparent once she and Ben reached the suburb’s western edge – it was the M6 motorway. Four days after walking out of Newcastle, they were officially in civilization again. The trail crossed the motorway by means of an overpass, and Rey waved to the passing cars as she walked.

A few minutes after crossing over the M6, the trail joined a cycleway and Ben fell into single-file behind Rey, to leave ample passing room for any cyclists they might encounter. They followed the cycleway into Rickerby Park, and then they were officially in Carlisle.

The park was bustling with people on this Sunday afternoon, despite the persistently cool temperature. Children played and adults lounged on the grass and under the trees, which were all in full springtime flower. Canoeists paddled on the River Eden as it wound its way into town alongside the trail.

“Let’s linger for a moment?” Ben questioned when they found a particularly attractive patch of grass near the riverbank.

Rey agreed, and they settled together on the grass, leaning against each other, hands and fingers entwined. They watched the paddlers on the river for a while, both content to be idle now that they’d reached the city.

“This was my granddad’s hometown,” Rey said after a while.

“Was it?” Ben replied, fingers absentmindedly toying with hers.

“Mm-hm. He brought me here once or twice, when I was younger. It’s the reason why I picked this trip to be my first one after he died.” She lapsed back into silence for a few minutes, then continued. “I like it here. It’s very…open. And peaceful. It reminds me of all the best parts of Durham. Of home.”

“I wish I could’ve met your granddad, Rey.”

Rey smiled at him. “He’d have liked you.”

Ben’s hand tightened on Rey’s, and his mouth worked for a moment, as if he were searching for words. “ _My_ granddad…someday I’ll tell you about him, Rey. For now I’m just glad to hear about yours.”

Rey leaned her head against Ben’s shoulder, and he rested his cheek against her hair. The river flowed endlessly to the sea.

***

Over the last few years, Rey had made it something of a tradition to book a swanky hotel for the last night or two of any trip she took. This trip was no exception. The hotel she’d booked was a gorgeous Edwardian affair, barely ten minutes’ walk from the Hadrian’s Wall Trail where it wound through Bitts Park, and a stone’s throw from Carlisle Cathedral.

Ben’s eyes had widened a bit as they made their way through Carlisle’s town square toward the hotel, and as the desk clerk checked them in he murmured a question to Rey about whether he could help her pay for it.

“Don’t be silly,” Rey murmured back, bumping Ben’s hip with hers.

“If you’re sure, _mo leannan_.” 

The clerk handed them two keys, and they made their way to their room. Rey thanked her lucky stars that she’d booked a room with a double bed, rather than a room with two twin beds or worse, a single. She and Ben let themselves into the room, and she unceremoniously let her backpack slide to the floor, looking around with appreciation. 

The room wasn’t as sumptuous as some of the others the hotel had on offer, but it had a very comfortable-looking double bed, a flatscreen TV, a table and two chairs positioned in front of a large window with a view of the cathedral, and a sparkling-white ensuite bathroom.

Ben let his own backpack fall to the floor and flopped onto the bed with his legs dangling off it, stretching his arms overhead with a luxuriant groan. “It feels so good to get somewhere and not to have to put up the tent.” He extended his arms to Rey as if he needed help sitting back up, and Rey walked over to the edge of the bed and took his hands with a smile. She let out a surprised squeal when he pulled her down onto the bed with him instead, and she landed sprawled out on top of him. He caged her in his arms and gave her a hearty kiss. “Thank you for sharing this with me, _mo leannan_.”

“No bother.” Rey smiled down at him fondly. “What would you have done otherwise?”

“There’s a hostel a couple of streets over. If they were full I’d have kept walking and pitched up somewhere outside of town.”

“Hmm. How very fortunate to have a sweetheart with a hotel reservation then,” Rey replied with some mischief.

Ben cradled her face with his palms. “Fortunate indeed.” He kissed her again, more slowly, tracing her lips with his. Rey sighed and relaxed against him, opening for him when he teased her lips with his tongue. Her hoodie and the shirt she wore underneath it had both ridden up when he pulled her to the bed, and his hands found her bare lower back now, gently caressing it as he continued his unhurried exploration of her mouth.

Rey whined a little in the back of her throat, and bore down against him with her pelvis. The action abruptly reminded her that they both still had their boots on, and hers were weighing down her feet where they dangled off the bed. They were also both frightfully unwashed. The day’s walk hadn’t been especially sweaty, but the fact remained that they’d both traveled 13 miles on foot that day, and one did not simply accomplish that without acquiring a certain smell. 

With a sigh, Ben broke the kiss and rolled them both onto their sides, preparatory to sitting up.

“What do you want for dinner, _mo chridhe_? I’ll go get it while you take the first shower.”

Rey considered for a moment. “I could do a kebab. Or fish and chips, whichever’s easier.” Ben nodded and rose to stand, stretching his arms overhead again. Rey admired the view as his shirt rode up to show his abs. _“I am going to climb that like a tree.”_

The lascivious thought prompted another request. “And could you pick up some condoms and lube while you’re out? Or actually…” Rey bounded up from the bed and rummaged in her backpack. Finding what she was looking for, she held Jannah’s 3-pack of condoms up triumphantly. “My roommate insisted. I don’t know if they’re your brand, though.”

A muscle under Ben’s left eye twitched. Then he was across the room in two strides, kissing Rey emphatically again. “I’ll get condoms. I think we’re going to need more than three.”

***

When Ben returned half an hour later with two doner kebabs wrapped in one paper bag and various goods from the Lloyds Pharmacy down the street wrapped in another, Rey was clean and towel-clad, easing the tangles out of her hair as she sat on the bed. Rey hadn’t exactly _planned_ to still be only in her towel when Ben came back. She’d been considering the merits of the one or two pairs of lacy underthings she’d brought with her, and of the ways she might arrange herself on the bed to look the most enticing. But Ben was too efficient by half.

He set the pharmacy bag on the bedside table, the food on the table by the window, swooped in for a kiss, and murmured “Give me ten minutes,” almost before Rey had fully registered his presence. A moment later she heard the shower running in the ensuite.

The fragrant scent of lamb and pita bread wafted from the food bag, and Rey’s mouth watered. _“After,”_ she told herself. _“You’re about to have sex and you’ve already gone to the trouble of brushing your teeth for it.”_ But the siren song of hot kebab proved too much to resist, and when Ben emerged from the ensuite in his own towel, black hair in wild disarray from a rapid towel-dry, it was to the sight of Rey taking a large bite of a half-eaten pita.

Rey blushed. “Sorry. I’m going to taste like kebab now.”

Ben smirked. He walked over, dug the second pita out of the bag, and took a large bite of his own. “Now I am, too.”

Rey smiled up at him. She loved a lot of things about Ben, but this was one of the chief things. He seemed to understand her vulnerabilities implicitly, and he didn’t judge her for them. He just let them be, and gave her space to share them or not, in her own time. She decided it was time to be vulnerable again. Rey set her kebab down, ran her tongue over her teeth to make sure there was no food stuck there at least, and then held Ben’s gaze as she slowly and deliberately let her towel drop.

*******

Rey was proud of her body, for the most part. She kept it fit by hiking and weight-training at the university’s gym. But there was a reason why she’d kept her bra on last night.

Ben held her gaze for a moment, and then let his eyes roam, taking her in with apparent appreciation. The urge to cover her breasts was overwhelming, but Rey determinedly kept her hands and arms down by her sides. Still, the words refused to remain unspoken. “I know they’re small-“

“They’re perfect,” Ben interrupted emphatically. “They’re…can I touch them, Rey?”

Rey nodded, a little tremulously.

Ben stepped into her space and brought his left hand up to cup her right breast. His hand covered it entirely, and Rey swallowed. He smoothed his thumb over her nipple, coaxing it to attention, and then he brought his other hand up to do the same to her other breast. “They’re perfect, Rey. I love the way they feel in my hands. The way they look.”

Rey smiled, relaxing. She reached a hand out and plucked at his towel, slung low on his hips. “Can I see you, Ben?”

He released his towel one-handed, the other hand still playing with her breasts. Rey brought her hands to his hips and just admired him for a moment, as he’d done with her. His legs were just as muscled as his chest and abs, and his half-hard dick was getting harder under her gaze. She gently ran her fingers over it a few times, and then wrapped her hand around him and stroked the way he’d shown her the night before. 

Ben huffed and rested his forehead at the junction of her neck and shoulder as she worked. Not to be outdone, he brought a hand down from her breast and skimmed it over her stomach en route to her pussy. He began gently stroking her open with his fingers, using his thumb to rub her clit.

“Bed,” Rey sighed out breathlessly. Ben ceased his ministrations to grip the backs of her thighs, and he hoisted her up and into his arms. Rey wrapped her arms and legs around him and devoured his mouth with hers as he carried them to the bed, much as he’d done the night before. But tonight he landed on his back with Rey atop him.

They kept kissing as they adjusted limbs and pillows, ending up with Ben partially reclined against the pillows and Rey straddling him, bracing her hands against his chest and shoulders. Ben groaned into her mouth as she ground their lower bodies together, and Rey shivered at the obscene noises they made as her wet folds dragged over his shaft. “Ben, please, I want you,” she keened.

“You have me.” Rey shivered again at the huskiness in Ben’s voice. He turned his head away from her just long enough to fumble with the bag on the end table, and Rey took the opportunity to rain kisses on his neck and jaw. “Shift up for just a minute, _mo chridhe_.” Rey obediently moved her pelvis away from Ben’s, and he deftly rolled on a condom before squirting lube onto his hand and giving himself a few quick pumps. Rey took the lube container from him and attended to her own body. She was plenty wet, but Ben was the biggest man she’d ever been with and it had been a while since her last partner, and she was not about to attempt this without some assistance from Astroglide.

Ben gripped the base of his penis with one hand, and rested his other hand on Rey’s hip as she slotted him against her and began to sink down. The lubricant and her own arousal eased his entry, but she still had to pause, taking him a little at a time as her out-of-practice body parted to accommodate him. “Oh God, Ben,” she moaned as he bottomed out.

Ben wrapped both arms around her waist and pressed his forehead against the junction of her neck and shoulder again. “Rey…Rey, you feel amazing.”

Rey wound her arms around Ben’s neck and began to move against him, first rising and falling on her knees and then switching to more of a rocking motion when that became too tiring. Ben’s hands moved to her hips, helping her move but letting her set the pace. When Rey finally found an angle and rhythm she liked, she moved her hands to Ben’s face and pulled him in for a deep kiss. Their tongues quickly found one another and moved, following the rhythm of their bodies.

Rey began to pant and whine as her peak drew nearer. Ben’s cock felt so good inside her, opening her up in ways she’d never felt before. All she needed was a little bit more…she seized one of Ben’s hands and moved it between their bodies. “Touch me Ben, _please_!” Ben swirled her clit with his fingers and thrust his hips up against her _just so_ , and Rey came with a silent scream.

Ben groaned and shifted beneath her, knees bending to plant his feet on the bed and arms moving to brace her back as his hands gripped her shoulders. “Rey, please, can I…?”

Rey nodded blearily, still in the midst of her own orgasm. “Yes. Fuck me, Ben.”

Not needing to be told twice, Ben began pistoning up into her, using her body to find his own release. He groaned and cursed loudly as he came, hips stuttering and fingers gripping her shoulders so tightly she thought they might leave bruises. Boneless in her own afterglow, Rey couldn’t find it in her to mind.

As Ben began to come down from his climax, his lips found hers again and he kissed her, softly and slowly. Rey smiled against him, and felt him smile back.

*******

Ben scooted down the bed a bit, just enough to lie a little flatter, and Rey draped her body over his, tucking her head under his chin as his hands traced patterns over her back and sides. She felt very safe and cared for in Ben’s arms. She felt _loved_.

Much as she would have loved to stay as they were forever, the need to dispose of the condom was becoming acute. With a final kiss, Ben gently slipped out of her and shifted her body to one side so that he could leave the bed, and he disappeared into the bathroom. He returned with a damp washcloth, which he used to gently wipe between Rey’s legs. Rey smiled as she remembered their exchange from the night before, and Ben smiled back, eyes crinkling in a way that told her he was thinking of the same thing.

Rey rose from the bed to use the bathroom herself, wincing a little as well-loved muscles made their displeasure known. When she returned from the bathroom, Ben had donned a pair of boxer-briefs and was looking out the window at the deepening twilight. Rey slipped on a pair of underwear and a loose-fitting T-shirt before joining him at the window, wrapping her arms around his waist.

Ben slipped an arm around her shoulders, running his fingertips through the ends of her hair. “What else do you want to do tonight, _mo chridhe_?”

Rey considered for a moment. “I want to snuggle in bed, finish the kebabs, and watch Eggheads. And maybe have sex again.”

Ben kissed her forehead. “Sounds great.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Rey's hotel in Carlisle is based on [this place](https://www.peelhotels.co.uk/crown-and-mitre-hotel/). I have never actually stayed there, but I have admired it from afar!
> 
> Just one chapter and the epilogue/endnotes left! I don't want to promise anything, but my school's spring break is next week so I am hopeful that I'll be able to get the final parts of this fic out relatively quickly. Thank you all so much for coming on this journey with me!


	7. Day 7: Carlisle to Bowness-on-Solway, 15 miles

Rey rose to wakefulness gently and gradually, like a diver slowly surfacing, as the ever-lengthening daylight hours of late spring crept in on catlike feet. She drowsily extended out an arm across the duvet, searching for her bedmate. Her awakening mind was just coherent enough to marvel at the swiftness and ease with which she’d become accustomed to his presence next to her as she slept – heavy, solid, and warm.

Not finding him by touch, Rey finally opened her eyes and squinted to look at the clock on the night table, which read just after 5:00am. The sun was just rising. She peered further around the room and found Ben. 

He was seated at the table by the window, clad only in the tracksuit bottoms he slept in, looking out into the dawn light. His journal was open in front of him, but his eyes were focused out the window rather than on the open pages, and he was absently fiddling with the pen, as if in deep thought.

Rey watched him quietly for a few minutes, and then disentangled herself from the sheet and duvet to pad over to where he sat. Ben heard her footfalls and glanced over his shoulder at her, smiling a good morning and returning her kiss to the corner of his mouth before facing the window again. Rey wrapped her arms around his shoulders from behind, propped her chin on top of his head, and followed his gaze.

Their window faced west, so there was no actual view of the sunrise, but before their eyes Carlisle Cathedral was gradually changing colors from a nondescript brown to a warm and inviting gold. The sky was likewise lightening from a deep blue-purple to brilliant pinks and yellows, and she could hear birdsong – the avian residents of Carlisle greeting the new day with their springtime aubade. 

Rey’s eyes drifted down to Ben’s journal. The only thing written the open page was a poem:

_The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you._

_Don’t go back to sleep._

_You must ask for what you really want._

_Don’t go back to sleep._

_People are going back and forth across the doorsill_

_where the two worlds touch._

_The door is round and open._

_Don’t go back to sleep._

***

Carlisle was still just barely stirring when Rey and Ben walked through the town square en route to Bitts Park an hour later. Apart from a few early-morning dog-walkers, all was quiet, and they found themselves speaking in hushed tones, reluctant to break the spell of the morning stillness.

Bitts Park arranged itself along the south bank of the River Eden, just north of Carlisle Castle in the heart of the city. In addition to the Hadrian’s Wall Path along the river, it featured manicured gardens, weeping willow trees, jogging trails, at least two play areas for children, and a skate park. At this early hour they had the park largely to themselves, apart from a few joggers, but Rey could well imagine how lively it would be on a fine summer’s day.

When Rey and Ben reached the river, they turned westward and began walking downstream, beginning to follow its course to the Solway Firth. The sun, still low in the sky but rising higher by the minute, cast long shadows before them. They moved lightly and lithely, carrying only daypacks with maps, food, and water. They’d be spending a second night at the hotel, and had taken advantage of that fact to leave their heavy backpacks behind. 

As they gradually left the city behind, passing under the railway bridges carrying the West Coast Main Line, the trail climbed onto an embankment above the river, rising and falling in elevation a few times by means of wooden steps built into the bluff. “This section must flood in heavy rain,” Ben mused, eyeing the steep embankment below them which showed evidence of having been carved out by years and years of floodwaters.

“I think you’re probably right,” Rey replied. “Remember the flood stages marked on that bridge, back in the park? They were taller than you!” Rey smiled teasingly, and Ben gave her a wry half-smile back.

They continued on, passing housing estates and a power station on the western edge of town. Then, almost without warning, they were in open countryside again.

Rey marveled anew at how many times the landscape and atmosphere had changed as she’d made her way across England over the last seven days. She’d only just left the city of Carlisle behind, but it already felt like she and Ben were at the edge of the world. There was little to see but river and pasture, and the pastureland here was somehow different from what she’d traversed previously. It was flatter, less contoured, simultaneously more open to her gaze and yet with a feeling of enclosure. Where the sky had felt limitless and yet comfortingly close the previous day, today it felt like it was being held up by sheer force of the earth’s will, and in danger of falling down at any moment.

As she had done many times over the last seven days, Rey imagined herself as a Roman centurion, posted to a fort at the western end of Hadrian’s Wall – the edge of the world as they would have known it. Had that centurion come alone, or had they brought a spouse and family with them, to forge a new life far away from the center of the empire? Had they married a local, and had children? Had they come willingly, hoping for adventure? Had they dreaded it; viewed it as being sent to a cold and far-flung backwater, far away from the comfort and familiarity of home? 

“Tell me about the Romans,” she said to Ben.

Evidently he’d been lost in his own idle thoughts, because he startled a little bit at Rey’s abrupt request. Then with a smile, he gathered his thoughts and began to narrate.

“We’re walking toward Maia Fort, or Mais Fort as it’s written in some sources. It was the westernmost fort on the wall as far as anyone can tell. It was also the second-largest, next to Petriana, which is somewhere beneath the suburb of Stanwix now. And it marked the edge of the Roman Empire. To the north,” he gestured to their right, “lay the land of the Caledonians. And over the western sea,” he gestured somewhere in front of them, “lay Hibernia.”

“Who would have been sent here?” Rey asked, thinking of her own daydream.

“Difficult to say,” Ben replied. “Not much is known about the garrison. It’s known to have been commanded by a tribune at one point in the third century, meaning the garrison likely consisted of a thousand men. But was this a posting you’d have been eager to get? I don’t know.” He paused for a moment. “I think for someone with an intrepid spirit it would have been an adventure – journeying to the extreme frontier of the empire.”

“Kind of like us,” Rey thought aloud. “Here we are, walking across England for no other purpose than fun. Because we can.”

“‘Because it’s there,’” Ben said with a grin.

An underpass carried the trail under an A-road, and then they were in the small farming community of Grinsdale. Various people were out and about, beginning their workdays on this Monday morning, and Rey and Ben nodded greetings as they passed through. The trail skirted around and through a large cattle farm, and their pace slowed as they picked their way across the muddy pasture, well-churned by bovine hooves and liberally scattered with cow patties.

At the far end of the pasture they found the cows. Rey had seen plenty of other cows on this journey, but until now they’d all been safely on the other side of a fence. These cows were very much on their own turf here, clustered around the small burn which she and Ben would need to cross by means of the small, dilapidated wooden bridge she could see between two large four-legged bodies.

Encountering cows always made Rey slightly uneasy. None had ever offered her any insult, but she was always intensely aware that they were much bigger than her and could hurt her if they really wanted to.

Ben seemed to sense her trepidation. “I’ll go first, shall I?”

“Please,” Rey replied. Ben briefly pressed her shoulder with his and then walked forward, broadcasting his movements to the numerous liquid brown eyes following his progress. Rey followed in his footsteps a few beats later, and breathed a sigh of relief once she crossed the bridge and was safely out of their territory, boots caked in mud and manure but otherwise unscathed. 

“You don’t like cows?” Ben asked as they fell back into step.

“I like them fine. I’m just aware that if they ever decided they didn’t like _me_ , there’s not a whole lot I could do about it. And I find the way they watch me a little unsettling.”

Ben smiled. “Fair. I wild-camped next to a farmer’s field in Scotland once, and when I woke up the next morning I realized there had been a bull in the field the entire night. He never came near me, but he was watching me with this ‘I’m havin’ you’ expression on his face the whole time I was packing up. I don’t think I’ve ever struck camp so fast!”

Rey laughed, imagining Ben in all his six-foot-three glory, hastily packing away a tent with an irritated bull glowering in the background. She wound an arm around his waist as they walked and squeezed. Ben put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed back, dropping a kiss to her hairline before they separated.

They passed through a gate, and then steep steps took them down an embankment to another burn; a tributary of the River Eden. Concrete slabs carried them across the marshy ground at the bottom, and a tree-lined path overgrown with flowers and weeds conveyed them to the outskirts of a sleepy village, Kirkandrews-on-Eden.

At Kirkandrews-on-Eden they were forced to divert onto a tarmac road. They took a brief break to drink water while Rey consulted her map and Ben consulted his guidebook. “The trail used to run parallel to the road, following the River Eden, but there’s been too much landslipping in recent years,” Ben said. “I guess they’ve given up trying to reclaim the trail here whenever it floods.” Rey nodded and grimaced just slightly. She could see from her map that they were in for a lot of tarmac for the remainder of the day as it was. But evidently there was no help for it. Her feet would just have to complain.

The road took them through Kirkandrews-on-Eden and then to its sister-village of Beaumont, where they paused again to admire its church, perched on a rise above the rest of the town. “There used to be Roman wall on that spot,” Ben explained. “It was dismantled to build a small castle on that same spot in the 11th century. Then the castle was dismantled to build the church.”

“Upcycling before it was cool,” Rey grinned. Then another thought occurred to her. “Matter is neither created nor destroyed. It just gets converted into different things.” Pleased with the real-life parallel to one of the very first chemistry lessons she’d ever learned, Rey continued to gaze at the church. It was a pretty church on a pretty spot, and Rey found herself wondering which stones came from Hadrian’s Wall and which stones came from elsewhere, and which of the nearby houses might also have matter of Roman provenance in their walls and foundations.

Once Rey and Ben had looked their fill at the church, they turned west to follow a gravel track out of Beaumont. The track soon petered out into an indistinct green lane, following a line to Powburgh Beck that was so precisely straight, Rey thought they _must_ be following the line of the Roman wall again. She reflected that it was interesting how, even in spots where no visible wall remained, its ghostly presence still dictated their path. 

A footbridge took them over the beck, and then they turned left to meet tarmac road again. After a few minutes of trudging along the road they came to the substantial village of Burgh-by-Sands, their halfway point for the day.

Rey and Ben had gotten such an early start that, even after walking more than seven miles, it was barely midmorning now and none of the village’s pubs were open. But Rey had planned for such an eventuality, loading up her daypack with the last of her sandwiches and the hoard of snacks collected from various honesty boxes over the preceding days. “Fancy a picnic?” she asked, eyeing the focal point of the town, Saint Michael’s Church.

“Sure,” Ben replied. “Let’s see if the church is open.”

The church had been built with a fortified tower at the eastern end, which gave it an odd air of half-castle, half-religious building. The door was indeed unlocked, and Ben and Rey entered to find a table set up at the back of the pews with two kettles, various tea- and coffee-making paraphernalia, and a stack of pamphlets with information about the church itself arranged on it in an orderly fashion. Rey picked up one of the pamphlets to read as Ben began boiling water for tea.

“Edward the First died in Burgh-by-Sands in 1307,” Rey read out. “He lay in state in this church, prior to being taken south for burial in Westminster Abbey.” 

Ben made an interested noise. “I knew Longshanks died within sight of Scotland, but I didn’t realize this was the church where they laid him out.”

“Was he on his way to fight William Wallace?” Rey asked, only halfway joking.

“Nah, Wallace was dead by then. This was to fight Robert the Bruce.”

They settled into a pew to drink their tea and eat their food. After she’d done so, Rey wandered around the church, admiring the stained glass windows, while Ben took his turn reading one of the informational pamphlets. Other hikers would no doubt be along eventually. Burgh-by-Sands was a popular resting stop, being halfway between Carlisle and Bowness-on-Solway, and the church clearly welcomed weary travelers if the spread on the back table was anything to go by. But for now Ben and Rey had it to themselves, and Rey was enjoying the tranquility.

She meandered her way back to Ben where he continued to take his ease, his long legs stretched out along the pew. She playfully tousled his hair and he leaned catlike into her touch. “Ready for the last seven and a half miles of your first long-distance trail?” she asked him.

“Aye. Let’s go.”

***

They followed the tarmac road out west out of Burgh-by-Sands and descended a very slight rise, lined with trees. When they reached the bottom of the rise, the trees fell away and they paused briefly to take in the view. To their left, the ground gently rose again into moorland, but to their right was the tidal estuary of the Eden where it broadened out to meet the Solway Firth. 

And across the firth, plain as day, was Scotland.

Ben let out a long breath. “There it is.”

“There it is,” Rey agreed.

“I’ve never seen it across the water like this,” Ben said, awe evident in his voice. “I’ve seen it from the ground and the air, but not like this…like the English and the Romans would have seen it, on their way to try and conquer it.” 

Ben continued to gaze across the water to Scotland for a long moment. Rey stood by patiently, giving him space to take it in. After a while he blew out a breath, then turned to Rey and gently enveloped her in a hug. Rey knew instinctively that he was looking for support rather than affection in that moment, and she stood sturdily, stroking his hair with one hand while her other arm braced his back, lending him solidness while he worked through whatever it was he was experiencing in that moment.

“I’m glad you’re here with me, _mo chridhe_ ,” he said simply, before releasing her gently.

***

They began walking again, taking care to set a sustainable pace. The tarmac road they were on was a single-track affair, stretching away from them in a dead-straight line for the next three miles. The road closely paralleled the estuary, and there were signposts at regular intervals cautioning walkers and motorists about the road’s propensity to flood at exceptionally high tides.

Rey’s mind wandered again as they trudged along, moving to the roadside verge every now and then when a car passed by. Idle, half-formed thoughts came and went without any particular order, but she was dimly aware all the while of a deep hum somewhere just at the edge of her hearing. Eventually she realized that the humming was coming from Ben.

“What song is that?”

Ben looked a little sheepish to have been caught out, but when Rey smiled at him, he shyly smiled back and began to sing in a slightly exaggerated Scottish accent:

_Now Sark runs over the Solway sands_

_Tweed runs tae the ocean_

_Tae mark where England’s province stands_

_Such a parcel o’ rogues in the nation_

“It’s a Rabbie Burns poem, set to music. The line about the Solway got it stuck in my head.”

“I didn’t know you could sing, Ben!”

Ben’s cheeks flamed, but he smiled. 

At long last they reached the end of the straightaway and the small farming village of Drumburgh. They both sighed with relief as the trail took them off the tarmac estuary road and onto a gravel path, which then conveyed them into another cow pasture. Ben and Rey stayed steadily shoulder-to-shoulder as they walked through the pasture, but these cows largely ignored them, continuing to graze placidly as they passed by. Toward the far of the field they encountered some sheep which, in comical contrast to the cows, bleated in alarm and stampeded untidily out of their way.

They joined another gravel track when they reached Glasson, which took them at right angles around a small caravan park. It was near Glasson that they met their first eastbound walker of the day – a willowy middle-aged woman with hair dyed an incongruous shade of lavender, carrying a backpack and trekking poles similar to Rey’s. She hailed them cheerily and slowed down, indicating she wanted to pass the time of day.

“Lovely day for a walk, isn’t it?” she asked with a smile.

“Aye, it’s that,” Ben agreed. And it was true; the weather was holding fair with more sun than clouds, and a temperature that was perfect for walking in – just cool enough to be refreshing without needing to layer up.

“Are you just starting?” Rey asked.

“I am!” The woman’s accent was North American with a vaguely English inflection to some words, not unlike Ben’s. “I gather you two are finishing today?”

“We are!” Rey replied. 

“My congratulations,” the woman replied with a warm smile. “Not far now! Enjoy the rest!”

Rey and Ben thanked her and continued on their way. They walked in silence for a few minutes, before Rey said “I hope I can rock purple hair that well when I’m that age.”

Ben smirked. “I hope I’m able to keep doing trips like this when I’m that age.”

“I’m sure you will. We _both_ will.”

After passing through Glasson, the path took them back onto grass, following a narrow path that threaded between the estuary and the back fences of the houses of Port Carlisle. Rey was surprised to find her pace quickening. They were nearing the end of a 15-mile day, her longest of the entire hike, and she should have been growing weary with fatigue. Instead there was a bounce in her step. 

She reflected with a smile that there were plenty of reasons for that.

She was nearly at the end of a walk that had spanned 84 miles, clear across England from the North Sea to the Irish Sea. She’d made a journey spanning three English counties, entirely under her own power. She’d honored her grandfather’s memory by walking to his hometown. She’d seen lovely landscapes and evocative ruins. And she’d met Ben. Ben who was wonderful, and who she already knew would be an important part of her life…maybe for the rest of her life.

The presence of more houses heralded their arrival in Bowness-on-Solway, and the path resolved itself into a track, with a wooden fence on both sides.

Ahead of them, Rey spied the wooden pavilion that marked the official western endpoint of the trail. She exchanged a glance with Ben, who’d seen it at the same time. She smiled cheekily up at him. “Shall we jog it, then?”

Ben smiled back, and as one they broke into a shuffling run, hampered slightly by leg muscles sore from 84 miles of walking over the preceding six or seven days. They bounded over the mosaic floor of the pavilion and out the other side, where a drawing of a Roman presided over a sign proclaiming “Wallsend 84 Miles – Good Luck Go With You.”

They had officially completed Hadrian’s Wall.

Ben dropped his daypack to the ground and whooped, punching the air with both fists. Rey smiled widely and dropped her own daypack and trekking poles, letting out a cheer of her own. Then, almost before she knew what was happening, Ben was swooping down, looping one arm under her leg and his other arm under her elbow. He rose up with Rey slung across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, roaring triumphantly as Rey shrieked with laughter.

He spun them in circles, continuing to crow triumph as Rey continued to laugh with unbridled joy from her perch. Then he finally swung her down onto her feet, only to catch her up again in a fierce hug coupled with a passionate kiss. “We did it, _mo chridhe_.”

“We did it, Ben!” She kissed him again.

Ben lifted her off her feet and spun them in circles again, Rey’s legs kicking far out from the centrifugal force as they both laughed with abandon, high from the joy of their accomplishment.

_“This is why we do this kind of thing,”_ Rey thought. _“For this moment, this feeling, right here.”_

_“When can we do it again?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The eponymous Rumi poem makes its appearance at last!
> 
> "Because it's there." - George Mallory, speaking about Mount Everest.
> 
> The song Ben sings in this chapter is a Robert Burns poem set to music called ["Parcel O'Rogues."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js7x3u2GHYs)
> 
> I hope everyone is doing okay and keeping healthy and well while the COVID-19 pandemic rages. My university is one of the many that has had to go remote for the foreseeable future, which has thrown my life into some not-inconsiderable chaos. My advice to everyone (which I am trying to follow myself, with variable success), is to keep to a schedule and try all the new hobbies you've been meaning to try but haven't had time to. This is not forever and we are going to get through it. 
> 
> See you all for the epilogue, hopefully next week!


	8. Epilogue and Endnotes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Easter, Chag Pesach Sameach, and Ramadan Mubarak to everyone observing any or all of those holidays today or later this month! This epilogue took much longer to write than I anticipated, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your patience. I must give a special thanks to JuliaAurelia for allowing me to use her as a sounding board while I was working out some major kinks in how I wanted this final bit of the story to go. I found a solution that I’m happy with, and I’m hopeful you’ll all be happy with it too. So without further ado, the epilogue!

On a Friday afternoon in high summer, Rey bustled from her bedroom, to the kitchen, to the common room, and back again, buzzing with nerves and excitement as her flatmates looked on in amusement. She’d made sure her bedroom was clean and tidy, the bed crisply made up with freshly laundered sheets. She’d also cleaned the bathroom she shared with Rose until it was spotless. She’d spent the morning stress-baking, and the entire flat smelled pleasantly of scones. Now she was fluttering to and fro, looking for more things to keep herself occupied until Ben’s train was due.

Because Ben was coming to visit! He was coming to visit, and spend the entire weekend with her in Durham. It would be the first time she’d seen him since they’d parted at the train station in Carlisle the previous month, and she could hardly contain her anticipation.

This was going to be the first visit of many, if all went according to plan. On their last evening in Carlisle, after a round of celebratory sex for finishing Hadrian’s Wall, they’d both brought out their calendars (Rey’s on her phone, Ben’s in an actual physical planner, _God_ she loved this man) and set to plotting and scheming. The plan that had emerged was to visit each other roughly every second weekend starting with this one, alternating between Durham and Glasgow. And Ben had gallantly offered to be the first one to make the three-hour train journey between their homes.

Rey flushed with pleasure and bit her lip as she gazed unseeing out of a window in the common room, oblivious to Jannah and Rose’s indulgent but slightly exasperated looks as they watched her from the couch and the overstuffed armchair, respectively. She and Ben had been in contact over the previous month, of course. They’d texted every day and talked on the phone more nights than not. But very shortly she’d get to be in his physical presence again. Hear his voice in-person again, instead of over a mobile phone. Feel his arms around her again. Share a bed with him again. She marveled, not for the first time, that only four nights of sharing a sleeping space had been enough to make her miss his presence alongside her at night, wrapped around her as she slept.

“For pity’s sake, sit down for five minutes, Rey,” Jannah said as she turned a page in the music score she was studying. “You’re going to wear a hole through the floorboards if you keep pacing.”

Rey made an apologetic noise and flopped down on the couch next to Jannah. After a few moments of quiet she drummed her feet on the floor and squealed up at the ceiling. “I’m just so excited to see him, and for you two to meet him!”

“We know you are, hen,” Rose said with a gentle smile, sipping her tea. “We’re excited to meet him, too.”

Rey knew it wasn’t just lip service. When she had returned from Hadrian’s Wall, she’d barely gotten through the door of the flat before Rose had taken a single look at her and squealed, “Ohmygod Rey, spill!”

“About what?” Rey had asked, as she’d begun to unbuckle her backpack, preparatory to unslinging it from her shoulders. But a stubborn, secretive smile had given the lie to her affected obliviousness.

“About that five-course meal you had in Once Brewed, of course!” Rose was hopping from foot to foot, practically dancing with glee. “And after that too, I’d say!”

Rey was fully smiling by now, but kept playing coy. “I can’t imagine what you mean.”

By then Jannah had appeared behind Rose, drawn by the commotion. And with her usual directness, she’d looked Rey squarely in the eye and pronounced, “Hen, you’re glowing.”

But Rey knew Jannah and Rose’s happiness for her went deeper than that. Her baseline mood over the past month had been brighter than it had been since her grandfather’s funeral, and she knew that her friends were glad for that, and glad for her. And if her new relationship with Ben had facilitated that lift in her mood, then they already liked him a great deal for that fact alone.

Rey knew that part of her restlessness was fear – fear that her friends and her lover wouldn’t like each other. Rose and Jannah had repeatedly assured her that they were quite prepared to like Ben for the simple fact that he made her so visibly happy…but what if they didn’t? He was quiet around people he didn’t know, and his sheer height and breadth could make for an intimidating picture. What if they didn’t get along?

“Rey.” Jannah interrupted her thoughts with a level look. “It’s going to be fine.” She smiled at her then, and Rey smiled back. Bless Jannah for her unerring intuition. Rey impulsively leaned her head against Jannah’s shoulder, and Jannah bent her arm to pat Rey’s cheek one-handed as she returned her attention to her score.

“Do you still want me to make banh mi for dinner?” Rose asked.

“Yes please,” Rey replied.

Rose set her teacup aside. “I’d better start prepping then. And you’d better get to the station!”

Rey looked at her watch and made an exclamatory noise. Thirty minutes until Ben’s train arrived! She bounded up from the couch, grabbed her phone and keys, and all but skipped out the door.

***

Rey prowled along the southbound platform at the railway station, waiting impatiently for Ben’s train to arrive. He’d texted her when he boarded the train, to warn her that he was on one of the big CrossCountry trains and he wasn’t sure where on the platform he’d pop out. So she knew she’d need to keep a weather eye out for him. Luckily Durham’s railway station was relatively small, so there was no real danger of them missing each other, even with a moderate number of other people milling on the platform. 

At last an announcement chimed to say that the train was approaching, and in almost the same moment Rey heard it rumbling, getting closer. A few moments later the vivid yellow, gray, and pink CrossCountry train rumbled to a stop before the platform, the doors opened with a pneumatic hiss, and Ben was decanted out of one of the carriages further down the platform along with a flurry of other passengers.

Rey took a split-second to appreciate the sight. He was in a gray T-shirt and dark jeans, with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder and his thick black hair loose around his ears. He wore sneakers – she dimly registered that this was the first time she’d ever seen him regular footwear – and she would bet money that they concealed a pair of vividly colored socks. 

He looked around, searching for her, and when his gaze finally found hers he broke into a smile. Rey made an inhuman noise of happiness and excitement and rushed over to him, and he quickly dropped the duffel bag, preparatory to catching her as she launched herself at him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his waist. He securely wrapped his own arms around her hips and buried his nose in her neck, squeezing tight. For a long moment they just held each other like that, reveling in the sheer bliss of being firmly in one another’s embrace again. Then, as the train pulled away to continue its journey south, Ben gently set Rey back on her feet. He smoothed her hair out of her face and cupped her cheeks, leaning in to kiss her. Rey wrapped her arms loosely around Ben’s waist as she returned the kiss. It was firm, loving…and full of promise.

After another moment they separated, and Ben smiled down Rey – her favorite smile of his, the one that showed all his teeth. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” she said back, smiling up at him in turn. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too, _mo chridhe_.” Ben leaned in for one more kiss, and then picked up his duffel bag with one hand, taking Rey’s hand with the other. “Lead on.”

***

Rey discovered she needn’t have worried about Ben, Jannah, and Rose gelling with one another. By the time Rey got Ben settled into the flat and he was finished showering and freshening up from his journey, dinner was ready and the four of them sat around the kitchen table to enjoy Rose’s banh mi. By the end of the meal her flatmates and her boyfriend were chatting together like old friends. Ben was somewhat quiet at first, seeming content to let the girls carry the conversation, but when it was discovered that he and Jannah shared a love of classical music, they were off to the races. He also praised Rose effusively for her cooking, both verbally and by eating at least one of all four of the banh mi fillings she’d prepared.

Jannah and Rey did the washing up (Ben tried to help, but was summarily shooed back to the table by Jannah since he was a guest), and then the four of them lingered over a final cup of tea and Rey’s scones.

“What are you two up to this weekend?” Ben asked, directing the question to Rose and Jannah.

“I’m working 12-hour shifts both days,” Rose replied, “but I’m off for a few days after that. Nurse life!” She grinned wryly. Rey grinned back. She knew Rose loved being a nurse and wouldn’t trade her career for anything.

“I’ll be around the flat tomorrow,” Jannah said. “Sunday I’ll be at the cathedral, with my choristers. You’re of course welcome to come to the service, Ben.”

Ben looked to Rey for confirmation that they had no other plans for Sunday morning, and she nodded. “I think I’d like that. Thanks, Jannah.”

Rose was the first to go to bed, since she had a hospital shift starting early the next morning. Ben agreed that going to bed sounded like a fine idea, since he had an afternoon of train travel to recover from. He and Rey then duly absconded to her bedroom, and as soon as the door was shut and locked behind them, they were on each other in an intertwining mass of arms and hands and lips. 

“Do you share any walls with anyone?” Ben asked, in between pressing feverish kisses along Rey’s jaw and neck.

“No,” Rey replied breathlessly, tangling her fingers in Ben’s hair. “There’s just Rose’s and my bathroom there, and a hall closet on the other side.”

“Good,” Ben replied, just before both their bodies hit the mattress.

***

They spent the next day exploring Durham.

They walked along the River Wear hand-in-hand, enjoying the June sunshine, and then made their way to the high street. They made a leisurely progression along the sharply curving street, stopping into various stores and bookshops and taking their time browsing the wares. They had lunch at a Turkish restaurant situated between the river and Durham Castle, and then began wending their way toward the castle and the cathedral beyond. They’d be visiting Durham Cathedral again the following day as parishioners, but today they played the role of tourists, slowly wandering through the mighty 12th-century edifice, taking in the stonework, the stained glass, and the shrine of Saint Cuthbert that served as the cathedral’s centerpiece.

The cathedral had a large, grassy quadrangle along its south side, and they lingered there for a long while after they finished their explorations, stretching out on the grass and enjoying the fine weather. Many other residents of Durham were doing likewise, picnicking on the grass, tossing Frisbees, and chasing their children and dogs around.

Rey lay with her head in Ben’s lap, dozing a little as he worked small, scattered braids into her hair. “I hope you’re enjoying my city,” Rey said drowsily, enjoying the feeling of the warm grass beneath her and Ben’s fingertips soothing across her scalp.

“I am,” Ben replied. “Very much. It’s very green here. I love living in Glasgow, but every time I go back after having been elsewhere, I’m struck by how little greenery there is, comparatively speaking.” He paused for a few minutes, focusing intently on a braid near her temple. “It feels very welcoming here. The university, the cathedral, the green spaces…it all feels very soothing. Very homelike.”

“So you won’t mind coming back to visit?” Rey opened her eyes to peer up at him.

Ben leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Not at all.”

***

That evening they lay reclined against the pillows in Rey’s bed; Rey in the tank top and shorts she wore for sleeping in the warmer summer months, Ben in his tracksuit bottoms. Rey lay cuddled into Ben’s side with his arm around her shoulders, reading a guidebook about Cornwall. Ben was reading a paperback he’d found at a used bookstore earlier that day, absently toying with the ends of Rey’s hair where they brushed his hand. At length he reached the end of a chapter, placed his folded-up bookstore receipt between the pages as a bookmark, and set it aside with a sigh. He peered down at Rey’s guidebook. “Are you still thinking September for the South West Coast Path?”

“Mm-hm,” Rey replied, turning a page. “I’m still figuring out my route. It’s hard to judge feasible distances, because there’s so much elevation change. Sea cliffs, you know.”

“Mm.” Ben pressed a kiss to the side of her head, where one of the braids he’d given her earlier had yet to come fully unraveled. “Send me pictures. My lectures will have resumed by then, otherwise I’d ask if I could come with you.”

“I will.” Rey closed the book and set it on her night table, then settled more fully into Ben’s arms, turning on her side and draping an arm over his waist. Then she looked up at him with a playful gleam in her eye. “Tell me about Glasgow. What shall we do when I visit in two weeks?”

Ben affectionately squeezed her shoulder. “I thought we’d do a bit of sightseeing, kind of like what we did today. The cathedral, my university, maybe the Kelvingrove Museum. And you’ll meet my flatmate, Tai. He’s sound. And I thought a bit further down the line, if you get bored of the city, we could go further afield. There’s a lot of hiking and hillwalking nearby, and the Edinburgh Festival will be on in August.”

“I do seem to recall that you promised to take me Munro-bagging,” Rey grinned up at him.

Ben grinned back. “And I shall.” His vision shifted to the middle distance. Rey could practically see the gears turning in his head, considering hills, routes, logistics, and likely weather conditions for the time of year. “Maybe Ben Lomond first. Or maybe a bit further north, around Crianlarich or Tyndrum. There are a few hills that can be strung together into bigger days, using deer-stalking paths and the West Highland Way to get between them.”

“The West Highland Way…” Now it was Rey’s turn to shift her gaze to the middle distance. She’d heard of it before, of course. It was the most famous long-distance hiking path in Scotland. Everyone who did any amount of serious outdoor walking anywhere in the UK had heard of it. And she recalled Ben mentioning that he’d done bits and pieces of it, usually to get between Munros. But might it be an idea…?

She sat up slightly and turned to face Ben more fully, as the idea rapidly took fire. “Tell me more about the West Highland Way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That’s right folks, there’s going to be a sequel!
> 
> I realized as I was drafting, scrapping, and re-drafting this epilogue, that there was WAY more to this story and to the future progression of our Space Beans’ hikers' courtship than could be neatly wrapped up in one final chapter. So there’s gonna be a whole 'nother fic dedicated to the West Highland Way and the first year of their relationship! It is provisionally titled “across the doorsill where the two worlds touch” and my goal is to start posting it in late May, once my spring semester is over and I have more time and brainpower to devote to writing. (Side note: doing PA school online IS A HELLUVA RIDE, y’all.)
> 
> A few words on the inspiration for this fic: As readers have likely guessed, I am an avid long-distance hiker myself, and I did a partial walk of Hadrian's Wall in August 2017, followed by a complete thru-hike in April-May of 2019. My AO3 profile pic is actually of me on that second trip, at a signpost about a mile east of Bowness-on-Solway. I was idly looking at my own AO3 page one day in late December 2019 while I was putting the finishing touches on my TROS fix-it, the picture caught my attention, and this fic was born. I thought I could get it written in a couple weeks and it *might* reach 20k words. Three and a half months and 36k words later, here we are!
> 
> The resources I used to write this fic were the [official trail guide published by Cicerone](https://www.cicerone.co.uk/hadrians-wall-path-third), which Ben is shown reading in Chapter 1; [the XT40 map published by Harvey Maps](https://www.harveymaps.co.uk/acatalog/Hadrian-s-Wall-Path-YHWRHA.html), which is the map Rey uses; and my own trip diary, which can be found [here](https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=90134) if anyone is interested in reading it. (Side note: WalkHighlands is second to none if you are planning a trip to Scotland and want to do anything at all outdoors, or if you're just in need of some travel reading while we're all confined to barracks.)  
> However, I walked Hadrian's Wall from west to east in nine days, rather than east to west in seven days as Rey does it in this fic, so I had to do some mental gymnastics to get the route descriptions right, since my trip diary and the Cicerone guide both describe the trail in primarily the opposite direction. Any errors in this fic are entirely my own fault. 
> 
> A word on the locations: All locations mentioned by name are real places. Some of the places Rey stays are real and some are made up. To whit:  
> \- The hostel in Newcastle where Rey and Ben meet is a mashup of several different real hostels.  
> \- As noted in the endnotes of Chapter 2, Cassian and Jyn's Airbnb in Heddon-on-the-Wall is based on a real place.  
> \- Rey's B&B in Chollerford is entirely fictitious, but the campsite where Ben stays and the George Hotel are both real.  
> \- The hostel in Once Brewed is a real hostel, operated by the YHA.  
> \- Rey and Ben's B&B in Lanercost is a composite of two real B&Bs, one in Lanercost and one in Banks, but the Disapproving Proprietor is entirely my own creation.  
> -And finally, as noted in the endnotes of Chapter 6, the hotel in Carlisle is based on a real place. 
> 
> There are bits and pieces of myself scattered throughout this fic, but I wanted to make mention of a couple in particular: I made Durham Rey's hometown, for the simple fact that I grew up in another Durham which is a sister-city to the one in England. I've visited the English Durham only once, but I absolutely loved it. Ben's relationship with Scotland is based heavily on my own. I lived in Edinburgh from 2011-2012 and still visit at least every other year. If this fic was a love letter to the north of England, the next one will be a love letter to the west of Scotland, and I hope that comes through well. 
> 
> If anyone is inspired to take a trip to Hadrian's Wall themselves (after the pandemic has run its course and we can all safely resume traveling again), two websites I recommend starting with are [this one](https://hadrianswallcountry.co.uk/) and [this one](https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/hadrians-wall/). A good resource for anyone who wants to see cool wall stuff but doesn’t feel up to hiking 84 miles is the [AD122 bus](https://hadrianswallcountry.co.uk/travel/bus), which runs from Greenhead to Hexham (near Chollerford) from April to October and visits all the major wall sites. You can buy a pass good for up to 3 days which gives you unlimited hop-on/hop-off privileges for the entirety of the route.
> 
> [Banh mi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A1nh_m%C3%AC).
> 
> Happy trails, and I will see you all on the West Highland Way!


End file.
